I have an Oculus and am fully aware of what it can do, so seeing the bland Metaverse graphics is jarring. I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but a juicy one just popped in my head. What if the current Metaverse implementation is bad on purpose? A distraction, meant to diminish public excitement and therefore serious competition from the rest of the big tech, while Meta continues to improve on core VR capabilities and really cement their edge. Then one day - boom! an entirely different experience that takes full advantage of the platform.

Probably not though. The impact-driven incentive culture of Meta is unlikely to allow that sort of feint. The company is going all in on VR because they need to control the hardware layer, having missed the mobile phone boat. Being at the whim of Google and Apple has caused many issues for FB/Meta, so this is existential.