The metaverse is a concept that not everyone accepts and now one of the main motivators of its development, Mark Zuckerberg , has admitted that he will enter a “valley of disillusionment”, even though he sees this technology as the next great computing platform. .
A year ago, Zuckerberg decided to change the name of his company from Facebook to Meta, and while he’s still confident that the metaverse is the innovation that could change the world, just like the smartphone did, enthusiasm for it is set to wane. .
On October 25, the company’s new device will go on sale, the Meta Quest Pro, whose cost will be 1,500 dollars and currently the expectations for its success are not so high; however, the entrepreneur’s vision is that to reach the point they expect they will have to wait some time: approximately 10 years.
“This is the first version of the line of work VR devices that we’re shipping, and it won’t be until later this decade, when we’re at V4 and V5, that this really starts to fully mature,” he said in an interview with TheVerge.
Although the commitment to the metaverse was given with great fanfare, Zuckerberg did not expect such marked enthusiasm. At that time, his perspective was to continue with the construction of a roadmap and in five years, people would probably begin to understand his decisions.
He also accepted that the metaverse is still a concept that has yet to be built, but the fact that there was so much excitement in its early stages gives him long-term hope of building a technology beyond what he initially thought was possible.
“A lot of the research that we have in mixed reality, augmented reality, neural interfaces, etc. I think we are leaders in the whole industry. So I’m really excited about what we’re doing, but it’s not like these things are going to be fully mature in a year or even two or three. It will take a long time to build the next computing platform,” Zuckerberg said.
How to deal with falling enthusiasm
Mark Zuckerberg was not the first person to discover the metaverse. The concept already existed since before he changed the name of his company, but it has been a very important part in positioning it as the “next era of the internet”. Did you make the right decision by betting on this technology?
The employer is clear that yes. “It would have been harder to mobilize around this now, and this is what we’re going to do over the next decade or as long as it takes: build this next generation of computing that’s going to be fundamentally more people-focused and deliver this sense of presence so you feel like you’re there with someone else,” he said.
He also admitted that despite the metaverse’s detractors, the approval will be gradual. Slow in these first few moments and then it will get “faster and faster … If you’re trying to build something on the scale of billions of people, that doesn’t happen overnight.”
Despite Zuckerberg’s hope for the metaverse, Meta is losing billions of dollars a year. On the one hand, Apple’s privacy updates have affected its advertising business and, on the other, its social networks are losing steam against competitors, such as TikTok.
10 years from now the metaverse may be a reality and the entrepreneur was right, but now his investors are concerned about how he handles the company’s current problems.
In a note sent to Meta investors, analysts at investment banking and asset management firm Needham praised Zuckerberg’s ambition to make the metaverse work for the long term, but also noted the importance of assessing the site where your business is found.
“We admire Mark Zuckerberg’s commitment to vision in the face of overwhelming odds. Meta is willing to make big bets that can either change the world for 2 billion consumers or create an epic glitch.”
