Meta’s Q1 Financials, the YouGov Report and AR vs VR
Welcome to this week’s episode of the All About The Metaverse podcast, presented by your co-hosts Chris Bruno and Alexis Nicosia.
In this episode, we’re digging into:
In this episode, we talk about:
Meta’s Q1 Financials ($4bn losses at Reality Labs – maybe they haven’t given up on the Metaverse yet).
The YouGov Report (apologies Chris said this was a new report, it’s not, it’s from 2022 – but was reshared in the News as a new report).
And finally the ongoing battle – will AR take over from VR – or will VR finally come good and be the holy grail?
and here are some links to the stories we featured:
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Episode Full Transcript
Alexis 0:01
I looked at that and he really looked like just so much is strapped the body cam Did you just felt so real and kind of impossible to do today with a tech but the tech is there.
Chris Bruno 0:12
Welcome to all about the metaverse podcast, the show that keeps you up to date with the latest technology, trends and news about our future digital world. Alexis, welcome back to another episode of The all about the metaverse podcast.
Alexis 0:26
Hi, Chris, thank you so much for having me very delighted to well fed kicking again, I guess. So. Let’s, let’s kick it right into into the thick of it. You already have lined up a couple of discussions. So let’s go.
Chris Bruno 0:40
I have Yeah. And I think again, like just so that everyone knows, I do consider you a co host not a sidekick. This is
Alexis 0:49
exactly as long as you don’t, you know, beat slap me. Like, you know, like that meme of it is rather boring. All right, well, we’re delighted to be co hosts.
Chris Bruno 1:03
I’m definitely going to drop that meme in now. My name and your name later on. Right. Okay. So there is three really big things I think that we should talk about today, one of them being last week. 10 days ago, meta announced their financial results. And this is a huge one because whether we like it or not, meta is a big player in the metaverse. Lots of people are talking about them as being they’re never going to make the metaverse, they’ve lost so much money and look at what they created and blah, blah, blah, blah. I think there’s a lot to be said for that. But I wanted to start with what are your thoughts? So this quarter, they’ve reported that they lost 4 billion in the reality labs section of the business, which is what’s focused on making this Metaverse and the VR side of things. And that’s after losing 14 billion last year. So in a quarter, this sounds like they’re not easing up in terms of their investment. What are your thoughts?
Alexis 1:52
Well, I think we had a quick discussion before and you were very right. When you mentioned like you You’re such a large company doing such investments to them. It’s it’s peanuts. And if you if you were to keep growing at a staggering rate as they used to be growing, then you need to venture on some new tech. Okay, so it’s very clear that they, they chose which horse they want to bet in, and the horse seems to be okay. Well, Metaverse seems to be definitely one. Even if right now it’s a loss. Maybe on the long run, it’s going to be with let’s see, I don’t see them going into AI quite yet. But they haven’t made it very clear. I find I find it quite quite realistic, is either the fallacy of sunken costs going on here. Or they really have something very big in the pipe that nobody’s aware. Because even though Okay, nobody gives a shit if you lose $4 billion, but it’s still a big number, even even by meta standards.
Chris Bruno 2:54
Yeah, I think that’s the big one that this is a bit crazy kind of concept, right? I run a small business when you start talking and things like we lost 4 billion, but it’s okay. Like, we’ll be okay. And you think how, how is it going to be okay, but I do think it’s important to note that Facebook, sorry, meta, gotta keep remembering that meta didn’t lose 4 billion in that quarter. And this is what’s really interesting, even with that 4 billion loss for reality labs matter. Overall, I think the total profit was about 5.7 billion for the quarter. So they’re still making good amounts of money, right? The only people that probably wanting to make more money is the shareholders, especially the big ones that are saying, oh, cut costs, reduce the numbers make more profit. So bearing in mind, they’ve now laid off 13,000, maybe more people so far, this is making them a profitable company. And that’s including, I’m guessing, having to pay out all sorts of redundancies and packages to lay people off, etc. So they’re still making real money.
Alexis 3:53
You know, I think we are not giving them a break enough, because again, the technology that they’re putting forward, it’s it this is high tech, this is high, high level technology that needs to be, you know, pleasantly accepted by the masses. And in order to do that, you need to have, you know, a nice smooth tech that doesn’t bugs that doesn’t make you dizzy, that it’s you know, friendly, that has a real purpose. And you don’t build that in a year. I mean, we’re all being you know, big babies here like, Hey, come on, I want everything now. Alright. And again, you can’t steer a company just, you know, to please, investors investors have to see as well, what’s, what’s coming on the long term. Again, I might be biassed here. But and we said that before on the podcast, the next iteration of the web, Okay, the next internet, it’s going to be happening in a digital form an immersive digital form, whereas mixed reality what is like Metaverse like deep into the metaverse, I don’t know but it looks that it will take a little while to get it writes which doesn’t need to be every time for sure.
Chris Bruno 5:02
It’s an interesting one, because I think what we were talking about just before we hit the record button as well, I think it’s the all in podcasts with Jason Calacanis, Chumash sacks. Somebody else can’t remember the guys name now sorry. But they were talking about it in the sense that these big companies that have all been kind of announcing their numbers this the the financials for the first quarter. And what they’re realising is that these companies aren’t doing 100x growth, and there’s not a scope for them to do 100x growth. They’re no longer big growth companies. So for me, one of the things about this kind of play is this potentially, could be a 10x growth in the future, if it works out. And if it all goes, well, it could be. I’m not saying it will be. But it could be if this is the next version, and like you say, the next iteration of the internet, and it’s this virtual world and everything else. There’s a statistic that may be might like my mind boggled from this, but as part of what meta have done, they’re kind of creating the meta signing rather than Facebook rather than Instagram, etc. So you’ve got this meta signing, but they’ve also allowed people to create their own meta avatars. And so far, they announced the other day that there’s been over a billion meta avatars created. Now this is whilst there is nobody using the metaverse but a billion people have created a digital avatar just because they could
Alexis 6:19
Yeah, maybe if you want to do a business that does 100x, maybe you should start to do like a paper token, rather than you know, like building a ginormous, ginormous company that will onboard 10s of billions. I mean, when I say 10s of billions, I mean, when I say 10 or billions is like, you know, users, right? Not not not only users but users, right? Could be businesses could be people. And again, you definitely have like more than 10 billion Internet pages. Right. So so it will take a while.
Chris Bruno 6:49
I’m going to leave Papist open to everybody else. Do your own research. This is not financial advice, please.
Alexis 6:56
Absolutely not. Absolutely not buy paper token.
Chris Bruno 7:00
Don’t buy it don’t buy anything based on what we say never buy anything based on what we say.
Alexis 7:05
Yeah, we’ll never ask your money.
Chris Bruno 7:09
Unless you want to buy a black T shirt, which will be available soon. In every metal.
Alexis 7:12
Yeah. On the on the NFT. Standard 5606. Yeah, right. Absolutely. All metal versus Yeah.
Chris Bruno 7:21
Well, listen, let’s jump into the second topic. I don’t know if we if everyone else has seen this yet. Or maybe it’s just because we’re super geeky in this space. And we like this. But YouGov released a report the other day about the metaverse and how people are looking at this. So for people who don’t know, YouGov is a internet research marketing research company. They’re based out of the UK, I believe, but I think they also now work across the globe. They put together a big ass Big Ask report bag. It’s got lots of lots of pages with lots and lots of statistics. But if you want to read that, we’ll leave a link in the bottle link in the show notes below. Yeah, but I think one of the really key things was I do want to set the stage for this before anyone starts talking about it. But when surveying nationally representative UK and US audiences YouGov defined the metaverse as a virtual world where you can create an electronic version of yourself, and then take part in activities on your devices and associated equipment. So it’s really specific language, but this is what they use to set the tone for what they were actually doing as part of this market research. Now, here’s what I found really interesting. More than half of all the people that they asked, had heard of the metaverse now. So this is now because he doesn’t want people know. Yeah, this is huge, right?
Alexis 8:33
Well, there was another report I saw that they did in Ireland. Actually, not so many people heard about the term metaverse. So again, our Irish friends, get get up to speed. Yeah.
Chris Bruno 8:46
Well, listen, I mean, like looking at those numbers, if you say 57, or 55% of people actually have said that they have heard of this. This is already for me anyway, it’s a big thing. Like nobody really knows what it is. Nobody knows exactly what it will be. Lots of people have very different definitions of that. But I think what’s really interesting is that actually that, as you keep reading the report, some of the other data suggests that I think this was the one that I’ve really liked as well that the metaverse is currently expected to manifest as an improved and extended version of virtual reality. That’s how people see it, or that’s what people are expecting this to potentially be. And I think that’s a really important one, because we’ve talked about this before as well. And we’ve crossed paths on on this topic. What is the metaverse? Is it accessible through your phone? Is it accessible through Chrome browser on your computer? Is it accessible through AR VR headsets? What is that kind of development? What does that development look like? But it seems like actually the majority of people that are talking about knowing about it or understanding what it is potentially, they’re seeing it as being a VR thing, a VR play. What’s your thoughts?
Alexis 9:45
Well, VR, it’s coming. So now what people perceive it’s obviously quite far away from what the reality is going to be. Another thing that’s going to happen quite quickly and people might not be ready for it. And I’m saying it I’m saying here on that, on that podcast viewed by billions of people, I think that’s what four is in the cusp of being created. When you have, you know, Metaverse, Blockchain, you know, AI all coming together and anthos. That’s good to be, you know, wet for. So what, what he creates here is that the expectation of people is only on on a certain level, which it’s, you know, not quite deep enough, I would say the surprise that we’re going to get is going to be really something that is going to be close to being plugged into the matrix. Now, I think it’s quite nice that more people, you know, figuring out what the metaverse is, but i It seems that the expectations are misaligned with what has been delivered. Okay. And it’s going to be even more. So. I think what it’s going to become, it’s going to be even more than what people think it’s going to be. Now, of course, we seen that Apple and who else has has unveiled? You know, some new tech, I think was Oh, you were saying micro Microsoft. Right?
Chris Bruno 11:06
So yeah, so this is the news that came out this week, which Microsoft have apparently filed a patent for brand new eye
Alexis 11:14
tracking software’s. So they’re all coming out, right? So the old
Chris Bruno 11:18
doing a play? For sure. Yeah. And I think this is so really interesting. Because if you look at these numbers, right, we might come back to the YouGov reports that might have some other statistics. If you talk about this idea of like the AR VR, the screen based metal versus how does that actually play out? So I think it’s interesting to see that you got for most people in their minds, they still picture this probably influenced by films, you know, the things like Ready Player One, they still see this as being a VR, you’re talking about it as like, you go into the matrix, and you’re really grossed in that. So PlayStation created or released serie last month, I think about a month ago, the VR to their second generation headset for VR, it has been mind bogglingly well received by the community, like in terms of what people have said about it. The experience has been fantastic. connected to something like a PS five, obviously just gives you that next generation of AAA experiences that can be built. But what I thought was really interesting about it is they’ve said I think the figures that they’ve released officially are they sold between 270 and 300,000 units in basically a month. Did you get yours? I haven’t No, I can’t afford it. Now. Station five, please sponsor this podcast to help us get up here.
Alexis 12:31
Yeah, I want one too. For sure.
Chris Bruno 12:34
The the reality of this is though, like it took them five months to sell just under a million units with the very first VR headset, if they’ve managed to hit like a third of that in just over a month. Like this is crazy numbers in terms of how this is actually ramping up. And I still believe that the PlayStation five is probably not as integrated everywhere as it is right? There’s a generation of people a bit like me that have a ps4 haven’t upgraded. I don’t get enough time to play games as much as I’d like to so I haven’t got into the next generation.
Alexis 13:05
So wait a minute. So now it’s gonna be the competition between again Microsoft and Sony. Oh, who’s going to get you know, the very best tech like, you know, maybe I I censored? Yeah. Well, wait. I mean, Stephen Hawking came up with that already. I mean, oh, Intel actually came up with that already. Stephen Hawking was actually leaving in the metaverse already. Well,
Chris Bruno 13:27
put it this way. If Microsoft come after this market right now, I think this is huge, right? Like Microsoft has just had a bit of a blow their Activision deal that they wanted to put through the UK regulators have said they can’t. So the UK really stifling that. I’m based in the UK for anyone listening. So this is a big, big slap that that’s the only country that’s really pushed against this. So look, if Microsoft are coming after this market, it’s for a reason. I don’t believe that all of these players and all of these very smart people at these very big companies that have been integral to the way that we’ve lived our lives online gaming, Microsoft, I mean, it’s just mind boggling. Imagine what they’ve done with chat GBT and their investment in open AI in just such a short period of time. If these guys are doubling down on VR, if these guys are doubling down on that experiential kind of way of interacting, the headset, the technology how you can be within that environment. There’s got to be something more to it right like I think we might have a second season in us.
Alexis 14:29
Yeah, well, listen, I’m first of all most I’m looking forward to what Apple is going to do. For sure. Microsoft’s huge machine is a huge is huge enterprise right so they will not come up with something very cool on like Skype. But I’m more looking forward to see what Apple is going to come out because they announced it’s going to come out in September, isn’t it?
Chris Bruno 14:53
I don’t know how official all of this is and knowing apple and I’m a big Apple fanboy like I basically have only owned a piece See, to be able to game and do a few things here and there. But outside of that, everything I use for work is my MacBook Pro. My iPhone, like everything I 100% love what Apple does.
Alexis 15:11
The story is this, this podcast is not being sponsored, so easy.
Chris Bruno 15:14
Please sponsor us. The reality of it is though, like they have had some issues when it comes to releasing quite big banging announcements, and they’ve made some light, you know, we’re going to make this product that sounds great. So one of their wireless charging pads was going to be fantastic. One thing out there, and then all, it’s not out quite yet, we’ll have to push that a bit further down the line. And currently, I think Apple’s having a bit of a transitionary phase as well, since they went into their own silicon chips, it’s been really interesting to see this, the average person is no longer upgrading. Because the difference between their first m one which blew people’s minds is what I use, it’s incredible. But then to transition to an m two for a marginal difference hasn’t shown people enough to actually make them do it. And I think this is becoming a thing for them as well. So maybe the the AI headset is the next phase. But I think as well, AI I know you don’t keep telling me this isn’t the AI podcast. But the AI game is also going to play huge.
Alexis 16:11
I know we need to we need to add, yeah, we need to add some some sprinkles of AI that podcasts, I think, I think this technology, it’s now clear that it’s going to continue, you know, flourishing and adding some salt and pepper to whatever tech is out there already. And definitely is going to be a part of the meta versus well, just just in terms of you know, creating those beautifully coloured and sensor rich environments. Right.
Chris Bruno 16:39
Yeah, 100%. And I think, again, like just to sort of remember this as well, Apple make incredibly nice. Let’s call them sexy products. Right? They are Yeah, they do, let’s but when we talk about Microsoft, we’ve got to remember as well, it’s not about the tech or the lack of tech that they make in that sense. It’s actually about the gaming people. There’s a huge, huge community through x Xbox, through PC through etc. that are using the Xbox, online gaming facilities, let’s call them. But if you start looking at those, there’s 120 million monthly active users as of December 2022. Again, just pulling up, that’s really quickly. But that’s a big audience right to play with.
Alexis 17:21
They’re gonna get it right, obviously, because they don’t want to lose the awesome market share that he can just capture. Very quickly. Imagine if you come out of the gate with an awesome device. And right away you have 100 50 million users right there. And then like right away out of the gates. Okay, well, let’s you very well ahead of the of the of the race.
Chris Bruno 17:40
100%. Yeah. And again, like this is just getting better and better. Right. So there’s, I don’t know if you saw this as a video game that came out recently. Sorry, that was announced recently. And it looks photorealistic. Did you see that one? So if you five. So Unreal Engine five. I’ll drop the clip down below afterwards. And they released this people actually immediately called out the developer on Twitter and said, This is fake. Right? You’ve just filmed this using a body cam.
Alexis 18:04
Oh, wait. Oh, wait. Yeah, yeah. I saw that. I saw that. Actually. Yes. So
Chris Bruno 18:08
then showed manipulating this environment in engine in Unreal Engine. And that’s the moment where I clicked and went, Oh, my God, like the next phase, you’re talking about triple A games, where games look very good. To going to, I don’t know, quadruple a games where it’s realistic to the point of being a simulation.
Alexis 18:29
To be honest, I didn’t believe it. I looked at that. And he really looked like just someone just strapped the body cam and went into you know, like, some some ghetto and, and play, play. Play guns. I don’t know, GG just felt so surreal. And kind of impossible to to do today with the tech but the tech is there. So yeah, that was definitely definitely beautiful to watch. I’ll put the link below so our auditors can have a look at that if they haven’t seen it already.
Chris Bruno 18:57
Absolutely. I will add that there. And I think that’s again, probably a great place to call it for today. But there are some monumental shifts happening right now. I think we have to, again, our premise of this show, we don’t bash anybody. But if Microsoft are building out something if Apple is releasing a headset, if there are game developers now making things that are so photorealistic that it’s hard to tell all of this sort of screams, you know, there’s a direction here that could play out. And the VR could play a massive part of it AR as well. But this is a really interesting space and the time to be looking at this space, I think more than anything else.
Alexis 19:30
Absolutely. Absolutely. I agree with you. And I think that will give us more legs than for more episodes, because I’m really, as you said, this is a great time to to live into this into this tech, and we’re going to be witnessing incredible things. Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Bruno 19:48
Also, just to let everybody know before we wrap up as well. We have just acquired a brand like a newsletter, but for us it’s going to be brand new, but we’ve acquired a newsletter that’s all about the metaverse, it’s going to be a weekly newsletter. so that we’re going to be pushing out if you’d like to sign up to that, please check out the link down below. Or you can find it on all about digital, all about the metaverse dot XYZ. So and then you’ll be able to find all that latest news. We’ll also be covering some of the greatest stories that we see during the week, and you’ll be able to get access to that. So feel free to have a look, link down below in the comments. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, please do hit that subscribe button as well. It means a lot to us and it shows us that we should continue making these episodes. Oh, for sure. Obviously we enjoy if you’re listening, but he’s enjoying it. And we can continue to build from there. Alexis, thank you so much. And take care everybody. Thank you, Chris.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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