• According to The Verge, Meta VP told staff to “sit down” and “build a great product” for the Metaverse.
• Reportedly, only 1 in 10 users return to the Horizon metaverse platform after a month.
• The vice president reportedly said he hoped the Metaverse and VR would “obviously be so successful that my dad would stop asking me to call him every week.”

Meta Vice President Mark Lovekin reportedly told employees this week that they need to focus on bringing the best Metaverse products to life. That mission is a little personal.

In this week’s internal roadmap presentation for Meta’s latest VR and AR products, Rabkin said: Alex Heath of The Verge.

“And please, make the Metaverse and VR a definite success and stop my dad calling me every week with questions,” he reportedly added.

Meta did not respond to an insider’s request for comment prior to publication.

Rabkin commented that many customers of Quest, the flagship virtual reality headset, are interested in Horizon, a virtual reality social platform where headset owners can create avatars and hang out with other users in the metaverse. I came here after witnessing that I lost interest in

Since Horizon opened to Quest users in early December 2022, it has attracted a lot of users. 300,000+ monthly users, an employee familiar with Meta’s VR efforts told The Verge. However, The Verge reports that only 1 in 10 users return to Horizon after a month. Despite the popularity of Quest headsets, 20 million units sold to date.

Usage statistics for the Metaverse, which has poured billions of dollars into Metaverse hardware and software efforts, are thus declining. In 2022, Meta’s Reality Labs — Meta’s business and metaverse research arm — lost CEO Mark Zuckerberg $13.7 billion in 2022 after investing his $15 billion in the same year alone. Zuckerberg said he expects Reality Labs to lose even more in 2023.

Still, Meta says its Metaverse efforts are not slowing down.

“Given the significant long-term opportunities we see, we intend to continue making meaningful investments in this area,” Meta’s chief financial officer Susan Li said in the company’s earnings call in February. Stated.

As such, Meta is keen to provide a better product that attracts new users while engaging existing users.

During Meta’s product roadmap presentation, Meta executives reportedly announced that the company would launch its Quest 3 headset later this year. It’s expected to be thinner and more powerful than the $400 Quest 2. A cheaper version of that headset could hit the market in 2024, with smart glasses with “neural interface” controller wristbands coming by 2025, reports The Verge. Meta’s flagship augmented reality glasses, which Zuckerberg says will one day be as popular as cellphones, are expected to arrive by 2027, according to the report. However, according to The Verge, plans for a more expensive Quest Pro successor have been scrapped.

Regarding Horizon, VP Vishal Shah said one of his main goals is to keep at least 20% of Horizon’s user base on the platform and use meta avatars across VR platforms. I said it was to double the number of people. Facebook and Instagram have reached his 75 million followers, reports The Verge.

But time will tell if Meta’s products keep users active in the Metaverse.

According to The Verge, Rabkin told employees: “We have to prove to people that all this power, all these new features are worth it.”