Mark Zuckerberg just renamed his entire company. Facebook is now Meta, and the message could not be less subtle: the future is the metaverse, a persistent shared virtual world spanning VR, AR, and a digital economy. The keynote is long, full of avatar demos, virtual offices, and a vision for a world where you work, play, and socialize in a headset. This is either a decade ahead of its time or a spectacular overreach. Possibly both.
The biggest bet in XR history
Reality Labs, the division that makes Quest headsets, is now the centerpiece of the company. Zuckerberg is committing tens of billions of dollars per year to a product category that has not yet proven it can sustain mainstream interest. The Quest 2 sold well. The metaverse pitch is something much bigger and much vaguer. A virtual world where you actually want to spend time is a product that does not exist yet, and building it is a harder problem than renaming the company.
The trend for the year ahead
Every company is about to have a metaverse strategy, whether or not they have a product for it. Expect the word to show up on every earnings call and every CES booth until someone either delivers on the promise or the hype collapses. This is going to be a messy couple of years.
I believe in VR. I am much less sure I believe in the metaverse as Zuckerberg describes it. The hardware ambition is real. The avatar demos are not convincing. Renaming the company is a signal of intent, not a shipped product. Shipping a compelling reason to live in a headset all day is a much harder problem, and nobody has solved it yet.
Part of Two Decades of XR, my running diary of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality.