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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

"Is [Metaverse] going to be a leap in humanity at the scale of the Apollo program?"

That is, IMO, the key question behind this entire discussion. Zuck certainly thinks so. I'm sure a lot of people at Meta and outside think so as well. And their detractors obviously don't.

There isn't going to be any consensus on whether Meta is spending too much money or not because ultimately it is a referendum on the concept of VR/AR/Metaverse itself.

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The All-In hosts gave a reasonable comment: Meta may well get a leap in humanity, but it should at least show incremental progress to the investors given such a huge quarterly investment.

In terms of pure technology there has been a crazy amount of incremental progress in the area. We have gone from the first kickstarter for Oculus (when VR was just a sci-fi dream) to the release of Quest Pro and games like Half-Life: Alyx in under a decade.

Of course shareholders really want to count actual monetary returns as progress, and it's the job of the CEO to decide whether prioritizing short term gains is actually in the best interests of the company or not.

> the first kickstarter for Oculus (when VR was just a sci-fi dream)

What? Virtual Boy was released almost 30 years ago, that's a consumer product that sold in the same ballpark as the Oculus Rift.

The thing is, speaking as a total non expert here, people have been taking about VR since the 90s, and it’s always kind of sucked. It’ll get much better over the next decade, of course. But even then, how many people want to sensorially sever themselves from the outside world? Lots of people who Meta thinks might use VR for work have, you know, other human bodies to take care of.

> and it’s always kind of sucked.

Some of us quite like it.

Why? Meta is controlled by someone who is completely unanswerable to his investors. What incentive does he have to show any progress?

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