TECH NEWS – Mark Zuckerberg’s company may be getting fed up with the amount of money its Reality Labs arm is spending on the project…

Andrew Bozworth, the head of technology at Meta, talked in an internal memo (obtained by Business Insider) about how Reality Labs, which is responsible for all things MR and VR (mixed/virtual reality), needs to get its act together this year or they will be seen as a huge failure in the metaverse project, which so far (and we’re not kidding) must have poured tens of billions of dollars into Meta, hoping for a big breakthrough, but so far it hasn’t happened.

Between 2020 and 2024, the Reality Laba division will lose $50 billion, and in last week’s quarterly report, the division lost another $5 billion. “We need to drive sales, retention and engagement across the board, but especially in MR. And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long-term plans to have a chance. If you don’t feel the weight of history, you’re not paying attention. This year will likely determine whether this entire effort goes down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure,” Bozworth wrote.

Meta’s chief technology officer said last week that Reality Labs’ revenue will grow by 40% in 2024, which could make 2025 a great year for Reality Labs, as it was its most successful year ever, although he added that it won’t be enough as the division needs to launch bigger than that. The problem is that it’s hard to determine the true size of the AR/VR market. Last April, tech investor Jack Soslow said that the VR market is bigger than we think… but he must have been talking out of his ass, because Soslow was working for a16z Games at the time. It’s a company that raises investment funds for game industry founders…

VR headset ownership among Steam users remains low, according to Steam’s latest hardware survey. Reality Labs plans to release half a dozen more AI-based wearables, but the timeline is unknown…

Source: PCGamer, Business Insider, Steam