While the Apple Vision Pro and its bizarre FaceTime tech is taking the internet by storm, the Meta Quest 3 has been a silent success. With recent holiday sales, the new mixed reality headset has resulted in Meta Reality Lab’s highest revenue ever.
Following the awful year of Meta’s Metaverse push, which saw the company spending billions every quarter, the Quest 3’s launch has been a surprising hit. After rough initial sales, the new headset is doing very, very well.
In the Meta Q4 earnings call, Meta reported that Reality Labs has hit its best revenue ever after many years. With sales of Quest 2, Quest 3, and Ray-Ban Smartglasses, the division raked in $1.07 billion in revenue.
Meta CFO Susan Li detailed the Quest 3’s strong launch as the main factor of the holiday success. The massive revenue was generated due to “Quest 3 sales during the holiday season". However, the huge sales also came alongside the division’s greatest expenditure yet.
Alongside its $1.07 billion in revenue, the Meta Reality Labs division spent $5.72 billion. This means that the division ended up losing $4.65 billion whilst making its biggest revenue ever. Furthermore, Li explains that these losses are set to continue to fund “ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and our investments to further scale our ecosystem".
Alongside new Meta Quest headsets, such as the Quest 3 Lite, Meta is also working on new technologies such as its long in-development AR glasses. There are also reportedly plans for a new Meta Quest Pro 2, despite the huge failure of the original.
Furthermore, Meta is investing heavily in game software for the Quest ecosystem. Alongside acquiring games studios, Meta has funded huge exclusives for the platform such as Assassin’s Creed Nexus, and even a full VR remake of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Meta Reality Labs isn’t expected to be profitable for years to come as mixed reality technology continues to evolve. While the launch of the Apple Vision Pro could be a great step forward for the adoption of the technology, it doesn’t seem that many are buying into the ecosystem.