| There’s R&D on a whole host of things - ranging from optics to battery life to designing silicon. There’s also all the software/gaming studio acquisitions made over the past few years. And, I suspect, they were bleeding cash like crazy on the Quest 2 subsidy and not recouping nearly enough via Oculus Store purchases. What’s more baffling to me is that we’re now several years into this “bet the company” XR pivot and nothing really seems to be coming to fruition. Yes they sold a TON of Quest 2s - via a financially ruinous subsidy and then everyone tossed the device in the back of their closet. They’ve spent a ton of money buying every successful VR game studio they could get their hands on for three years - and still have NOTHING but a handful of BeatSaber music packs to show for it. The Quest Pro was supposed to be positioned as a less expensive HoloLens for businesses while also getting Meta some real world experience with eye/face tracking. Thing is: the original device was supposed to have a depth sensor and it got removed at the 11th hour. Which, imo, completely ruined the HoloLens-lite positioning since the only AR differentiators over the Quest 2 ended up being slightly upgraded SLAM cameras and a janky color overlay. All the meatspace positioning had to be offloaded to an already over-worked Qualcomm SoC. And without those advanced AR capabilities, the Quest Pro is essentially an upmarket blend of the Quest 2 and the Pico 4. Which leaves the Quest 3. And we’ve seen enough of it from leaks to know it’s actually a compelling upgrade to the 2 - but it’s not expected to launch until 12 months from now. And it’s certainly not representative of what you’d expect from xxx billion dollars worth of hardware R&D. This comment is already too long so I’m not getting into the Metaverse thing, but it’s probably the biggest failure of them all. Tl;Dr: Imagine if Google launched Stadia along with an announcement that they were pivoting to the console market. Meta’s VR pivot is ALMOST at that same level of a self-inflicted mismanaged disaster. |