Every year, Time<\/span> Magazine issues a list of the 200 best inventions of the past 12 months. Frankly, I don\u2019t know how the editors do it. The dirty secret of this job is that true, game-changing inventions rarely cross your desk. In fact, you\u2019re extraordinarily lucky if you average one a year.<\/p>\n Oculus\u2019 Rift prototype felt like just such a device when it first crossed my radar more than a decade ago. More than anything, the system resembled a hastily duct taped ski mask. It was a remarkable presentation, in hindsight \u2013 an all too rare glimpse into a plucky entrepreneurial tech spirit. It evokes a flood of romanticized images of Homebrew Computer Club nerds soldering together circuit boards in South Bay garages.<\/p>\n A decade has now passed since Meta (n\u00e9e Facebook) announced plans<\/a> to acquire the startup for $2 billion. A decade after the deal was announced, it\u2019s safe to say that the VR headset hasn\u2019t changed the world we live in. But there\u2019s always that little-discussed middle ground between transforming the human condition and just an abject dumpster fire of failure. So, where, as April 2024, does the Facebook\/Oculus deal rank?<\/p>\n \u201cImmersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won\u2019t be changing and we hope to accelerate,\u201d Mark Zuckerberg wrote at the time. \u201cAfter games, we\u2019re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face \u2014 just by putting on goggles in your home.\u201d<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> David Fitzgerald\/Sportsfile \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Facebook\u2019s founder referred to the Oculus Rift as a \u201cnew communication platform,\u201d comparing it to computers, the internet and smartphones before it. He suggested that the \u201cdream of science fiction\u201d was now a reality \u2013 one that Facebook had suddenly cornered. It\u2019s hard to overstate how transformative Zuckerberg believed the technology to be. It was, after all, the gateway to the metaverse.<\/p>\n Should anyone doubt the company\u2019s commitment to the concept, it rebranded itself as \u201cMeta\u201d<\/a>, killing off the Oculus brand<\/a> the same afternoon. Surely social media platforms wouldn\u2019t dominate online discourse forever. They would eventually give way to something wholly new. In spite of the $500 billion rebrand<\/a>, Zuckerberg and co. never did a particularly good job defining the metaverse. They simply insisted that it was an exciting thing that you should be excited about.<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Facebook<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I suspect that \u2013 were you to perform a blind poll \u2013 the majority of people who are familiar with the term would describe something like Second Life (which has to be on its fifth or sixth life by now). Marc Zuckerberg is probably as guilty as any single person for perpetuating that perception, happily working his hardest to make the company\u2019s Horizon Worlds platform synonymous with conceptions of the metaverse. Remember what a big deal it was when it finally got legs<\/a>?<\/p>\n So where are we now? It\u2019s complicated, obviously. From a purely financial standpoint (the only language shareholders speak), things are bleak. Between the end of 2020 and the first quarter of 2024, the company\u2019s metaverse division lost $42 billion. That\u2019s roughly 21x the price it paid for Oculus, not adjusting for inflation. That\u2019s a little over one-fourth a Zuckerberg (not adjusted for inflation \u2013 i.e. BJJ-related bulking).<\/p>\n Why is Meta hemorrhaging that much money? The simple and cynical answer is, because it can. The corporation made $134 billion in revenue and $39.1 billion in net income last year. That\u2019s not to say that having a division that\u2019s $42 billion in the red over four years doesn\u2019t impact its bottom line, of course. But Facebook believes it\u2019s playing the long game here.<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Brian Heater<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s widely believed that Meta sells its Quest headsets at a loss<\/a>. This is despite the fact that the company has easily the best manufacturing scale in the industry. It doesn\u2019t take an MBA to understand that this is a terrible short-term strategy, but Meta believes it\u2019s playing the long game. The end game is getting enough of these devices into people\u2019s hands to reach a critical mass of adoption, word of mouth and developer content. If you can\u2019t do that while turning a profit, well, you gotta spend money to make money, right?<\/p>\n It continues to be a massive bet. How long the company is willing to play the long game here, however, largely comes down to how much patience Meta\u2019s shareholders have. If Facebook can truly saturate the market and corner content, it will be better positioned to capitalize on mixed reality\u2019s hypothetical exponential growth.<\/p>\n It\u2019s already had the impact of edging the competition out of the market and generally sucked the air out of the room. As an HTC Vive exec told me<\/a> back in February at MWC, \u201cI think Meta has adjusted the market perception of what this technology should cost.\u201d Other companies can\u2019t compete on price and content in the customer space, so the savviest of the bunch have moved over to enterprise, where clients have much deeper pockets.<\/p>\n![\"Mark](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/zuckerberg-selfie-horizon-vr.jpg\")
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