Facebook’s pivot to the metaverse continues to be messy. Meta’s Reality Labs division, home to its hardware efforts and other metaverse initiatives, will be cutting some of its projects, according to Reuters. It’s not clear which projects will be affected, but Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth reportedly told employees the company is no longer able to afford some of the work it had once planned, and some other projects will be “postponed.”
The news is the latest to blow to Meta’s ambitious plan to re-orient the company around virtual reality and the metaverse rather than its social network. The company lost $10 billion on Reality Labs in 2021, and plans to hire fewer employees in 2022 than in previous years.
At the same time, the company is apparently still plugging away at Project Cambria, the “high-end” VR headset expected this fall. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg teased new details on “color passthrough technology” for the device that would “enable developers to build a whole new level of mixed reality experiences.” The company also just opened its first physical retail store outside of the headquarters for Reality Labs.
