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Comment by bostonsre | Hacker News Reader

I think Zuckerberg just thinks vr is really really neat (disclaimer: it is decent, I have an oculus) but he is disconnected from the general population that can't be bothered to try it out and he is surrounded by yes men that are telling him it's an amazing idea.

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I tend to think the same. To be clear, I too have an Oculus and I also think VR is really really neat. But this whole pining after "the metaverse" is really silly.

Companies may develop experiences analogous to a Second Life, or Roblox, or World of Warcraft, or any other popular MMO (made more immersive by the VR medium), but I doubt they will have any further reach than those. At least I don't know why they would, anyway. To be fair, those games are successful and make lots of money, but compared to Facebook's current business they are a niche concern. So their enthusiasm seems misplaced to me.

Plus, VRChat already exists.

Don’t forget fort-nite. It’s free, has concerts and movie screenings and runs on most platforms. It seems to be meta versing without even realizing it.

Tim Sweeny is very aware that Fortnite is turning into a metaverse. He's commented on that quite a bit and Epic is adding features to Fortnite. Carefully; they don't want to break their cash cow.

I don't have an Oculus or even Facebook, but I remember a decade ago that my older relatives were hostile toward the idea of Facebook and moving aspects of their daily lives online. That all changed very quickly and has been very profitable for FB. I don't know if it will be brought about (in part) by Facebook, or if it will even happen anytime soon, but something akin to a "metaverse" seems almost probable to me at this point

> Plus, VRChat already exists.

VRChat has so many flaws that you can't make that argument. It needs competition, and badly.

Just offhand I can think of:

* Massive performance issues

* Controversial handling of 3rd party modifications (enforcement was stepped up only to put lipstick on the pig for their Series D, and MelonLoader itself puts faux security on its software in an attempt to make it look like it cares, by curbing obfuscation)

* Poor security (players have been able to legitimately fry the hardware of other players due to GPU exploits)

* Even years after launch, still basic usability issues like status being changed unexpectedly, causing privacy issues

When you have 58% of the voting share in a $1T company it doesn't really matter if you are surrounded by yes-men. You kinda can do whatever you think is cool.

I think the irony is that a circle of yes men form an echo chamber around zuckerberg, just like facebook has done for the general population. Eventually, he will be convinced that he is the internet messiah (if he doesn't already think that).

Wow Facebook hit 1T, that's insane

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