Price “will be affordable for many people”

Image: Marcus Kane

Meta publishes surprisingly strong quarterly figures. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg has denied rumors of a Metaverse departure.

Meta beat expectations in the first quarter of 2023 and is growing revenue again after three disappointing quarters. The company has other good news: Facebook added 37 million users year-over-year.

Wall Street responded positively, with Meta’s stock value up more than 10 percent in after-hours trading. The stock is now up 164 percent from its November 2022 low.

Departure from the Metaverse? Not really

Rumors have been circulating recently that Meta turned away from his Metaverse vision and instead invested more heavily in AI. Zuckerberg denied this in a Facebook post.

“The narrative that’s formed is that we’re kind of drifting away from focusing on the vision of the metaverse, so I’ll upfront say that’s not true. We have focused on both AI and the metaverse for years, and we will continue to focus on both.”

Table of quarterly results through first quarter of 2023, with Reality Labs revenue and operating loss highlighted in red. | Image: Meta

Meta’s numbers (above) bear this out: The operating loss of Reality Labs, Meta’s Metaverse division, is not only still consistently high, it’s growing. Research and development cost Meta nearly $4 billion in the first quarter of 2023, up 50 percent year over year. And in 2022, Meta invested $13.7 billion in the Metaverse.

“Building the metaverse is a long-term project, but the rationale for it remains the same and we remain committed to it,” Zuckerberg wrote.

MetaQuest 3 is coming

Meta’s CEO reiterated that it’s likely a “next-gen Quest headset.” Metaquest 3, to be released later this year. He also announced a number of new VR milestones:

• More than a billion meta avatars have been created to date
• Since last year, the number of Quest apps with revenue of at least $25 million has doubled
• More than half of daily active Quest users spend more than an hour on their device

The CEO did not reveal how many daily active users there are. The Wall Street Journal recently reported 6.37 million monthly Quest users (as of October 2022).

Zuckerberg wrote the following about the new Meta Quest:

“We have started quest 2 At this point it has been almost three years. It was a very big step forward for VR and I’m really excited to show the world all the improvements and new technologies we’ve developed since then, at a price that many people will be able to afford.”

A leak from March said Meta Quest would be slightly more expensive than the $400 version metaquest 2. At the same time, CTO Andrew Bosworth hinted that the current headset could stay on the market a little longermeaning it won’t be replaced by Meta Quest 3 right away.

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