IMO the real problem is that FB/Meta lacks game development expertise and creating attractive/fun VR universes seems like it's fundamentally a game development problem.

Creating a successful game is not easy, it takes a certain skill set, and the vision that Zuckerberg has demonstrated (virtual offices, museums and meetings) seems completely boring.

I think there might also be a branding problem because a lot of the stuff that people might actually want to do in VR (guns, violence, sex, tentacles, unsavory avatars) can't really happen under the FB/Meta umbrella because they need to remain family and business-friendly, but that stuff obviously has huge revenue potential, so others will beat them to it.

I'm also wondering if VR will continue to remain niche all the way until we have direct brain interfaces where things actually look and feel real.

And I think that's why Meta is getting nailed - it didn't cost $15B to build Roblox, and what does Meta have to show for how they deployed capital?

My sense of this is that it requires more imagination than Meta leadership is capable of.