Shares of Meta fell 19% in after-hours trading last night after Meta posted weak financial results with revenue below analysts’ expectations and lackluster future forecasts.

Operating losses came primarily from Metaverse-related departments. The company’s virtual reality and augmented reality division posted losses of $3.670 million. And the worst is yet to come: “losses to increase significantly in 2023”.

“We expect Reality Labs’ operating losses to widen significantly in 2023”, to know from Meta. Reality Labs refers to the business segment of Facebook that includes hardware, software and content related to virtual and augmented reality. “After 2023, we expect to accelerate investments so that we can achieve our goal of increasing the company’s total operating income over the long term.”.

target points to A huge investment in the Metaverse including a name change from Facebook to try to forget the social network’s privacy scandals and for the expenses incurred in developing Meta Quest Pro VR helmets aimed at companies and professionals. In this regard, the company has confirmed that its consumer variant will be available in 2023 as an improved upgrade to the current Quest 2.

Metaverse and Meta Events

Marc Zuckerberg wants to become the “King of the Metaverse”. And maybe in a few years/decades, millions of users will have access to these virtual worlds and Meta can return the investment. However you see the Metaverse even in the soup, the current reality is that it is green, not the above.

The industry’s big players are skeptical not only of its media coverage, but that it will “quit internet” as we know it to become the next great communication platform at scale. Investors don’t believe it and the collapse of Meta stock was monumental. Some big investment funds have already advised Zuckerberg to reduce investments in Metaverse, and the results seem to prove them right.

They fear money and want short-term results. And that is not possible. They have already come from Intel to release the hype and suggest that to develop the virtual worlds described by Zuckerberg, we would have to multiply the current computing power by thousands. And that’s the closest sample Consumer virtual reality was a fiasco and from augmented reality, the most interesting pokemons are on mobiles… It’s true that Meta, after buying Oculus, dominates 90% of the VR device market. If one day it sells as expected…

And not just the Metaverse. “Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to focus his company on the future promise of the metaverse distracted him from the unfortunate reality of today.”Insider Intelligence analysts explained it. “Meta is under incredible pressure due to weakening global economic conditions, issues with Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency policy, and competition from other companies, including TikTok, for users and revenue.”.

In the current economic and geopolitical climate, Metaverse could be the future of Facebook or the grave of Zuckerberg. We’ll see.