During the company’s Q4 earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was unwavering in his metaverse plans, despite unprecedented losses for Reality Labs.
Meta is pursuing its metaverse plans despite Reality Labs losing $13.7 billion in 2022. Reality Labs is Meta's metaverse arm of the business, and focuses on virtual reality and augmented reality. Additionally, Reality Labs is building platforms like Horizon Worlds.
In essence, Meta still believes that the investment in Reality Labs will pay off in the future. During the call, Zuckerberg said: “None of the signals that I've seen so far suggest that we should shift the Reality Labs strategy long term.”
Harsh reality
Currently, Meta’s Reality Labs is losing money. During the fourth quarter, the division lost $4.3 billion. In fact, this is the largest quarterly loss for the division to date.
Despite this reality, Meta’s chief financial officer, Susan Li, believes that the future is bright for Meta’s Reality Labs. Furthermore, Li expects further losses for the business.
She said: “We still expect our full-year Reality Labs losses to increase in 2023, and we're gonna continue to invest meaningfully in this area given the significant long-term opportunities that we see.”
Meta recently released avatar graphic updates for Horizon Worlds after criticism Credit: Mark Zuckerberg
Meta fights back
There are still reasons to be cheerful for Meta. Indeed, Meta’s overall revenue for the fourth quarter was $32.1 billion.
Consequently, Meta’s stock price is rising again, and has jumped up around 40% in since Meta’s quarterly earnings call.
Meta’s new headset
Zuckerberg is also planning to unveil a new “next generation consumer headset” later in 2023. Currently, Meta’s latest VR headset offering is the Meta Quest Pro.
https://twitter.com/MetaQuestVR/status/1579890489402314754?cxt=HHwWhMC-zfGB8-wrAAAA
The Meta Quest Pro offers new features like mixed reality with full-colour video feed, and face tracking via inward cameras.
At present, Reality Labs is showing no signs of slowing down and is fully committed to its vision for the future of the internet.
