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Meta says this is the make or break year for the metaverse [theverge.com]:

• News [theverge.com]

Meta says this is the make or break year for the metaverse

This year will decide if Horizon Worlds “will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure,” according to a Meta executive.

This year will decide if Horizon Worlds “will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure,” according to a Meta executive.

Wes Davis [theverge.com]is a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth is giving the metaverse a year to become a hit, according to an internal forum post reported by Business Insider [businessinsider.com]. That time period will determine whether Reality Labs’ mixed reality efforts are “the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure,” he writes.

Bosworth details his expectations early in the post:

We have the best portfolio of products we’ve ever had in market and are pushing our advantage by launching half a dozen more AI powered wearables. 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.

The post comes days after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recently leaked comments [theverge.com] in an all-hands meeting, in which he predicted an “intense year” and emphasized the need to stay in the lead with its smart glasses, which have taken the spotlight away [theverge.com] from Reality Labs’ Quest headsets.

Bosworth says that despite 2024 being the department’s best year, Reality Labs hasn’t “actually made a dent in the world yet.” The group is smaller now in the wake of layoffs [theverge.com] and the success of Meta’s Ray-bans [theverge.com] and AI efforts, but Bosworth wrote that it doesn’t “need big teams to do great work” and that he thinks smaller teams have moved faster and produce better results.

He closes out the post saying the team doesn’t need “a bunch of new ideas,” but that most in the group “just need to execute on the work laid out before them to succeed.” As for what happens if Horizon Worlds doesn’t become a hit in the next year, Bosworth doesn’t get more specific than his “legendary misadventure” comment. But it seems unlikely that it’ll take off now, making his post feel more like an expiration date than anything else.

See More:

• AR [theverge.com]
• Business [theverge.com]
• Meta [theverge.com]
• News [theverge.com]
• Oculus [theverge.com]
• Tech [theverge.com]
• Virtual Reality [theverge.com]

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