VR headset sales thwart Meta’s metaverse dreams

VR headset sales plummeted in 2022. The metaverse dreams of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta company have also begun to crumble.

Mark Zuckerberg decided to make a radical change in the vision of the company by changing the Facebook company to Meta in the past years. Restructured from the ground up, the company started to focus more on the world of the metaverse, as the name suggests.

Zuckerberg stepped into a radical transformation by connecting the future of Web3 and the internet world with virtual reality. The technology giant, which has increased its investments for VR headset products , has been greatly disappointed according to the latest reports.

Mark Zuckerberg, who aims to be one of the leading names in the metaverse world, unfortunately has had many disappointments in this field, according to the reports announced. Reality Labs, the company’s division responsible for virtual reality, has lost approximately $16 billion since the beginning of last year. This situation caused a significant decrease in the net profit of the company.

VR headset sales fell 12 percent

VR headset sales in the United States market fell 2 percent from last year to $1.1 billion. According to the data shared with CNBC by the research company NPD Group, a more dire picture has occurred on a global scale. Shipments of virtual reality headsets fell 12 percent year-on-year to 9.6 million.

VR headset sales peaked last year. Meta company’s new vision, goals and promises have impressed many people all over the world. On the other hand, the pandemic has also helped push people into virtual reality in this regard. As a result of all this, there has been an explosion in interest in VR. U.S. revenues doubled in 2021, from $530 million in 2020. On the other hand, Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 device started to dominate Steam VR with a user share of about 50 percent. But that trend gradually waned and, to the surprise of many, bottomed out in 2022.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg still argues that investing in the metaverse will yield millions of dollars in profit in the coming years. However, many analysts in the market point out that the virtual reality universe will go into a sudden decline starting from 2025. In fact, it is reported that even some of Meta’s senior officials have this suspicion.

Famous programmer John Carmack, who has been working at the company since the Oculus company was acquired by Meta in 2014, has recently come to the fore with important statements. Carmack described the latest point of metaverse technology as ‘disappointment’. He stated that the company had an unproductive attitude in this regard and resigned from his position, saying that he was unprepared for the inevitable competition in the market.