Meta gets real about runaway VR costs, prepares for cuts (just as Apple joins the race)
Is the Metaverse old news as AI becomes the hot new thing?
![Meta Quest 3](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/pxchLSia8dJXF2Yi5k8HKg-320-80.jpg)
Meta might have to adjust its AR and VR hardware ambitions, just at the moment it faces its biggest ever competition from Apple and its Vision Pro headset.
Mark Zuckerberg’s company has been ploughing billions of dollars into the development of a ‘metaverse’ digital world and associated hardware, but will have to rein back its spending, according to a new report from The Information.
Meta’s Reality Labs hardware team, responsible for the development of the company’s Meta Quest hardware, has been asked to cut spending by close to 20% by 2026. And in a wake up call for staffers (who have endured mass layoffs) Meta’s Chief Financial Officer Susan Li has told teams that they should be targeting a $1 trillion dollar opportunity in the augmented and virtual reality markets. It’s a considerable shift from the previous money-no-object spending approach at the company, which has lost over $55 billion via its Reality Labs’ ambitious plans since 2019.
A new challenger emerges
It’s a tough spot for the Meta VR/AR team — which legitimized the space under the Oculus banner before being purchased by Zuckerberg’s then-Facebook company — to be in, as it fends off competition from its first major competition. Apple’s Vision Pro has itself got off to a slow start after launching this year in the US in February, but has just expanded its availability to markets including European and Asian territories.
Meta Quest 3 128GB | $499.99 $490.99 at Amazon
The best value VR headset on the market, the Meta Quest 3 gives you access to hundreds of on-device and PC VR titles, in a lightweight form factor at a great price. Its high-resolution screen and full colour passthrough just seals the deal.
Though significantly more expensive than Meta’s Quest 3, the Vision Pro is considerably more technologically advanced, and Meta is now expected to find a response to that. It’s hoping to do so with an assault on the market into (and beyond) 2026, with the launch of a new Quest 4 headset (currently set to ship in standard and premium configurations), and a high-end variant of the Quest line a year later.
For its part, Apple is expected to take the opposite tact, holding fire on a Vision Pro 2 headset in favour of a more affordable, stripped back take on the existing Vision Pro (which costs a whopping $3,499).
Both companies are ultimately targeting a release of augmented reality glasses however, with differing prototypes in the works, expected to have more mass market appeal than a vision-encompassing headset.
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With VR still waiting for its mass-market moment, the race will be on to deliver the most compelling tech in a glasses-like form factor, though the elephant in the room will be investor pressure to refocus around artificial intelligence projects, generally seen to be the ‘next-big-thing’ in not just consumer tech, but the wider worlds of business, manufacturing and healthcare, too.
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Gerald Lynch is the Editor-in-Chief of iMore, keeping careful watch over the site's editorial output and commercial campaigns, ensuring iMore delivers the in-depth, accurate and timely Apple content its readership deservedly expects. You'll never see him without his iPad Pro, and he loves gaming sessions with his buddies via Apple Arcade on his iPhone 15 Pro, but don't expect him to play with you at home unless your Apple TV is hooked up to a 4K HDR screen and a 7.1 surround system.
Living in London in the UK, Gerald was previously Editor of Gizmodo UK, and Executive Editor of TechRadar, and has covered international trade shows including Apple's WWDC, MWC, CES and IFA. If it has an acronym and an app, he's probably been there, on the front lines reporting on the latest tech innovations. Gerald is also a contributing tech pundit for BBC Radio and has written for various other publications, including T3 magazine, GamesRadar, Space.com, Real Homes, MacFormat, music bible DIY, Tech Digest, TopTenReviews, Mirror.co.uk, Brandish, Kotaku, Shiny Shiny and Lifehacker. Gerald is also the author of 'Get Technology: Upgrade Your Future', published by Aurum Press, and also holds a Guinness world record on Tetris. For real.
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FFR Vr is dead.Reply
Cutting 20% from the quest hardware team isn’t going to help, Meta spent $4.3 billion on its VR division in three months, and made *checks notes* $440 million in return
And try as they might it’s impossible to pivot it’s gaming focused meta quest 3 from vr to Xr. The only thing it will accomplish is make a worse functioning product.