VR

Meta CEO Zuckerberg steadfast on metaverse plans despite $13.7B setback

During a Q4 earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said he saw no reason to deviate from the company’s long-term metaverse strategy.

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company has no plans to change its long-term strategy for the metaverse, despite operating losses for its Reality Labs business peaking in 2022.

Meta on Feb. 1 released earnings showing that Reality Labs lost $13.7 billion in 2022 — the largest ever yearly losses recorded for its metaverse-building division.

The fourth quarter was particularly costly, with the division losing nearly $4.3 billion, which was also the largest quarterly loss within the department since financials for the business were first published.

On a Feb. 1 earnings call, Zuckerberg was steadfast in the company’s metaverse strategy. Answering a question about how the firm’s efficiency applies to Reality Labs, he answered:

“None of the signals that I’ve seen so far suggest that we should shift the Reality Labs strategy long term.”

He added that later in 2023 the company would launch another “next generation consumer headset” following the October launch of its Quest Pro Virtual Reality (VR) headset.

The Meta Quest Pro is the tech firm’s latest, and most expensive, VR headset offering. Source: Meta

Meta’s chief financial officer, Susan Li, similarly doubled down on the Reality Labs business, echoing Zuckerberg’s statement from a Q3 earnings call that losses in the business would increase in 2023.

“We still expect our full-year Reality Labs losses to increase in 2023, and we’re gonna continue to invest meaningfully in this area given the significant long-term opportunities that we see.”

Related: Meta gets court win in metaverse acquisition plans: Report

Meta’s overall revenue for the fourth quarter was $32.1 billion, beating Wall Street expectations.

The better-than-expected revenue figures caused Meta’s stock price to jump after the bell, gaining nearly 19.5% in after-hours trading at the time of writing, according to Yahoo Finance.

Nifty News: Trump NFTs surge 800%, Yuga Labs blacklists NFT exchanges and more

Donald Trump’s NFT collection started strong but looked lifeless until a few days ago.

Trump NFTs daily sales surge by 800%

Former United States President Donald Trump’s nonfungible token (NFT) trading card collection has recently witnessed a massive resurgence in daily sales volume.

Compared to Jan. 17 sales volumes, Jan. 18 and 19 saw spikes of 800% and 600% respectively, according to market metrics aggregator Cryptoslam.

Some pundits believe the renewed interest could be due to his imminent return to social media networks, following reports that the former president was seeking to rejoin Facebook and Twitter ahead of the 2024 presidential election campaign.

The collection of 45,000 self-themed trading cards was launched on Dec. 15 and initially priced at $99 each.

Buyers of the collection were automatically entered into a sweepstake which included “1000s of prizes,” including one-on-one dinners, zoom calls and rounds of golf with the former President.

They quickly sold out and recorded daily sales volumes of over $3.5 million but plummeted to a baseline of around $26,000 by the end of 2022.

Yuga Labs blacklists NFT marketplaces

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) creator Yuga Labs has blocked secondary trading of its “Sewer Pass” NFTs on marketplaces that do not fully support creator royalties.

The NFT project was first announced on Jan. 12 and became available for minting on Jan. 17.

Only Bored Ape Yacht Club or Mutant Ape Yacht Club holders are able to mint the Sewer Pass, which acts as an entry pass to its new skill-based NFT game, called Dookey Dash.

A royalty is a fee that is taken from the price of a sale and sent to the content creator. Yuga Labs has been vocal about its opposition to broader shifts within the industry to royalty-free marketplaces.

The Sewer Pass has seen a high volume of trades on secondary marketplaces, with a floor price of 1.81 ETH ($2,809) and sales volumes of 15,627 ETH ($24,267,411), according to data from NFT Price Floor.

Based on Yuga Labs’ 5% creator royalty fee, secondary sales for the collection have already netted revenues of over $1.2 million.

Neopets raise $4 million to build metaverse

Virtual pet website Neopets — which was popular throughout the 2000s — has raised $4 million from gaming and blockchain investors with plans to create its own metaverse.

Some companies providing the funding are venture capital firm Polygon Ventures; investment firms Hasket Capital and IDG Capital; gaming company NetDragon Websoft; and the Ava Labs-run Blizzard fund.

According to the announcement, ‘Neopets Metaverse’ will be a play-and-earn virtual pet game based on the original and would allow players to “raise, care for, customize and battle with their Neopets” on the blockchain.

In the announcement, HashKey Capital’s investment director Xao Xiao notes: “We believe that GameFi plays a crucial role in the larger metaverse narrative, serving as the interactive layer in the value chain and a key driver of traffic across Web2 and Web3.”

Neopets was founded in 1999 and the company is hopeful that Neopets Metaverse will bring “the magic of Neopets in a positively fresh light to old-time players, as well as attract and nurture a new generation of Neopians.”

The community has had an underwhelming response to the announcement, with some suggesting its previous effort at creating a Neopets metaverse had been a flop.

The company had initially launched an NFT collection using the Solana network on Nov. 12, 2021, which allegedly went so poorly that it resulted in the hashtag #NoNeoNFT trending on Twitter.

Touch the metaverse, researchers say

A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has created a pair of haptic gloves that it believes can bring the sensation of touch to the metaverse.

The invention, called the HaptGlove, is an untethered and lightweight glove that will allow metaverse users to interact with virtual objects in a much more realistic fashion by conveying touch and grip.

A professor who is working on the HaptGlove. Source: NUSnews.

When users put on the HaptGlove, they can sense when their virtual avatar’s hand touches something, as well as tell how hard and what shape the object is as a result of the HaptGlove restricting the user’s finger positions.

NUS claims that the HaptGlove will also be useful in other areas, such as education and medicine, by allowing surgeons to prepare for surgeries in a “hyper-realistic environment” or giving students a hands-on learning experience.

The concept of haptic gloves is not new, with Meta working on their version. However, NUS claim that its gloves can provide users with a much more realistic sense of touch compared to others that exist today.

Those working on metaverse games have suggested that virtual reality is such an immature technology, it is difficult to incorporate it into metaverse products. Existing games like The Sandbox and Decentraland are yet to launch dedicated virtual reality clients.

More Nifty News:

On Jan. 18, NFT marketplace Rarible announced that it would expand its marketplace builder to include Polygon-based NFT collections. The builder will allow artists and projects to customize their marketplace, with its CEO Alexei Falin believing that community marketplaces would become the future of NFT buying and selling.

Crypto exchange Binance announced on Jan. 19 that it would tighten its rules for NFT listings, requiring sellers to complete Know Your Customer verification and have at least two followers before listing on the platform. The firm plans to “periodically review” NFT listings that do not “meet its standards” and recommend them for delisting.

Meta ‘powering through’ with metaverse plans despite doubts — Zuckerberg

Billions of dollars have been poured into Meta’s virtual world with little return on investment, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he is holding fast.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is still hopeful about the company’s metaverse plans regardless of the billions of dollars it’s sucking up from the company, claiming “someone has to build that.”

Appearing remotely for an interview at the Nov. 30 DealBook Summit in New York, Zuckerberg was asked his thoughts on whether the tech giant’s metaverse play was still viable given its cost and the doubts cast over the platform, answering:

“I think things look very different on a ten-year time horizon than the zone that we’re in for the next few years […] I’m still completely optimistic about all the things that we’ve been optimistic about.”

He added part of “seeing things through” in the longer term was “powering through” the doubts held about its ambitions.

Meta’s latest earnings, released on Oct. 26, revealed the largest-ever quarterly loss in its metaverse-building arm Reality Labs dating back to the fourth quarter of 2020. Zuckerberg’s virtual reality has cost $9.44 billion in 2022, closing in on the over $10 billion in losses recorded for 2021.

On the earnings call at the time Zuckerberg was unfazed by the cost, calling its metaverse the “next computing platform.” He doubled down on this claim at DealBook:

“We’re not going to be here in the 2030s communicating and using computing devices that are exactly the same as what we have today, and someone has to build that and invest in it and believe in it.”

However, Zuckerberg admitted that the plans have come at a cost, Meta had to lay off 11,000 employees on Nov. 9 and the CEO said it had “planned out massive investments,” including into hardware to support its metaverse.

He said the company “thought that the economy and the business were going to go in in a certain direction” based on positive indicators relating to e-commerce businesses during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. “Obviously it hasn’t turned out that way,” Zuckerberg added:

“Our kind of operational focus over the next few years is going to be on efficiency and discipline and rigor and kind of just operating in a much tighter environment.”

Despite the apparent focus from Meta to build its metaverse, Zuckerberg claimed 80% of company investments are funneled into its flagship social media platforms and will continue that way “for quite some time.”

Investments in Reality Labs are “less than 20%” at least “until the Metaverse becomes a larger thing” he said.

Related: The metaverse is happening without Meta’s permission

Of the 20% invested in Reality Labs, Zuckerberg said 40% of it goes toward its virtual reality (VR) headsets, with the other “half or more” building what he considers “the long-term most important form factor […] Normal-looking glasses that can put holograms in the world.”

Zuck takes bite at Apple

Zuckerberg also took a few jabs at its peer tech company Apple regarding its restrictive App Store policies, the likes of which have placed restrictions on crypto exchanges and nonfungible token (NFT) marketplaces, saying:

“I do think Apple has sort of singled themselves out as the only company that is trying to control unilaterally what apps get on a device and I don’t think that’s a sustainable or good place to be.”

He pointed to other computing platforms such as Windows and Android, which are not as restrictive and even allow other app markets and sideloading — the use of third-party software or apps.

He added its been Meta’s commitment to allow sideloading with its existing VR units and upcoming augmented reality (AR) units and hoped the future metaverse platforms were also open in such a manner.

“I do think it is it is problematic for one company to be able to control what kind of app experiences get on the device.”

Apple job listings and patents hint at foray into ‘3D mixed-reality world’

A “mixed-reality world” by Apple could be fast approaching as recent job openings show the tech giant is hiring a number of engineers with AR and VR experience.

Technology giant Apple appears to be working toward the development of a metaverse-sounding “3D mixed-reality world,” according to related patent filings and recent job postings.

Since Nov. 1, over 30 jobs have been listed on Apple’s careers page related to augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) with the Big Tech player seeking a mix of software and hardware engineers to be mostly based in its Technology Development Group (TDG).

TDG is a secretive team within Apple that may reportedly stem as far back as 2017, which is understood to be working on developing AR and VR technology. Apple has never officially confirmed such a device was in the works, though it is widely considered a tech industry “open secret.”

While Apple is currently hiring for over 150 positions, according to its careers page, one particular job opening from August makes particular mention of a type of “3D mixed-reality world.”

The job ad is for an AR/VR network engineer, with part of the description reading:

“In this role you will work closely with other developers and build tools and frameworks to enable connected experiences in a 3D mixed-reality world.”

A Nov. 9 Digitimes report citing unnamed sources said an Apple AR/VR headset will be assembled by Taiwanese electronics firm Pegatron — a company Apple currently uses for its iPhone 14 device — with mass production expected in Q1 2023.

A spokesperson for Pegatron told Cointelegraph it was “not able to comment on information related to a specific customer or product due to confidentiality.”

Cointelegraph contacted Apple for comment but did not receive a response.

Meanwhile, patent filings from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reveal in August that Apple trademarked Reality One and Reality Pro, both described as “photographic and optical apparatus and instruments” and “virtual and augmented reality headsets, goggles, and glasses.”

The filings were made under a Delaware shell company called Immersive Health Solutions LLC, a tactic often used by large companies such as Apple in an attempt to keep their future product plans private.

A search of Delaware’s business entities shows the company was created on Feb. 11 by The Corporation Trust Company, the world’s largest registered agent service firm used by Apple and other well-known companies such as Google, Walmart and Coca-Cola.

The same firm was used in a trademark application for a RealityOS in Dec. 2021 in what’s believed to be Apple’s operating system used for its reported upcoming headset.

Other trademark filings, such as one made in China under Apple Inc., show a haptic VR glove, tracking the movement of individual fingers, which further points to the company’s play at a possible metaverse space.

Related: Trademarks filed for NFTs, metaverse and cryptocurrencies soar to new levels in 2022

Apple CEO Tim Cook has already stated his thoughts on the metaverse. On a Q1 2022 earnings call in January when asked about the company’s metaverse opportunities, Cook said, “we see a lot of potential in this space and are investing accordingly.”

Multiple reports emerged in Jan. 2022 that Apple was slated to release the headset during its June Worldwide Developer Conference, but it didn’t come to fruition due to a series of development challenges.