Meta's layoffs, Netflix's intriguing VR title

Hello!

According to The Wall Street Journal, thousands of Meta employees will find out that they're being laid off on Wednesday morning. Over 87,000 people work at Meta. Cutting even a small percentage would result in not only the largest round of layoffs in Meta's history, but potentially the largest in a year that has already seen tens of thousands of tech jobs eliminated elsewhere.

Meta shares rose Monday following the Journal's initial report. Investors are eager for cuts–there's blood in the water. Through a quirk of timing, Mark Zuckerberg has been dealt a relatively easy hand; mass layoffs will be destabilizing for the individuals and teams they affect, but the move might be hailed as especially responsible and prudent when compared to the fiasco unfolding at Twitter. If the layoffs are accompanied by even a trace of solemnity, then Meta leadership may even be applauded for them. Jim Cramer might shed a tear of joy.

There is one way that Meta could lay off thousands and end up further enraging those calling for slashed headcounts: if it's too generous in insulating Reality Labs from the cuts.

That's not beyond the realm of possibility. With Zuckerberg in control and convinced that the metaverse is the company's future, Reality Labs teams might reasonably hope to at least stay flat in 2023. Even if Meta didn't prepare for a situation this bleak as it began making years-long plans for pumping tens of billions into the division, is it really hard to imagine that Zuckerberg might think that a cap in hiring and spending would be enough of a concession for now? That the critics are off base and that Meta should focus cuts elsewhere for the sake of its future?

If anything, I have a harder time coming up with reasons why Meta might pick this or that Reality Labs initiative as part of a sacrifice to shareholders. Last week I mentioned that the Quest 3 is too close at hand to make pulling back on existing plans through 2023 (continued development, production, a marketing campaign, assembling a launch lineup) feel remotely reasonable. Horizon Worlds, similarly, needs a broad team and ample funding if it has any hope of reversing the tide of jokes and avoiding a repeat of Facebook Spaces. If Meta does impose cuts on Reality Labs, my guess is they won't be to anything quite so prominent.

Meta might instead scale back some of the longer-term Reality Labs ambitions. It's not that there's anything it could or should cut without trepidation. After all, recent decisions to drop certain lines of research and development show that Meta has been at least a bit concerned with where Reality Labs money is going. To use the ongoing work on neural interfaces as an example, Meta's bet is that spending however much it takes to make the tech viable will lead to a sea change in computing that's worth far more than what it cost to get there (so long keyboards and touchscreens, hello Meta wristbands). Similar reasoning justifies the funding for AR glasses, haptic gloves and eerily realistic avatars. The argument against scaling back or cutting anything in Reality Labs is that it could lead to Meta missing out on the Next Big Thing.

Given that controlling computing's next wave is basically the division's raison d'etre, tomorrow's layoffs could close off a few of Meta's potential futures depending on where they land.

Surprising things about Stranger Things

Over the weekend, Netflix announced that a Stranger Things VR game is in the works. Slated for release in late 2023 and planned to launch on "major VR platforms," it's not a shocker that Netflix decided to adapt this franchise for its first high-profile VR project. According to the stats Netflix releases (and to the extent we can trust them), the most recent installment of Stranger Things is second only to Squid Game's first season in hours watched. The somewhat nerdy, shamelessly nostalgia-soaked show also weaves in telekinetic tropes ripe for VR exploration.

What did catch me off guard is the set of names behind it. With them, Stranger Things VR leapt right up my list of VR games I'm most curious about.

Netflix tapped LA-based indie studio Tender Claws to develop the game. Trusting Stranger Things to a small team known best for immersive theater experiments and Virtual Virtual Reality 2's perhaps over-ambitious meditation on the metaverse is a bold choice. Combined with the acquisition of Oxenfree makers Night School and the decision to publish Into the Breach on mobile, I can't help but think that someone in games decision-making at Netflix has cool taste.

But it's not just the involvement of Tender Claws that caught my eye. Xalavier Nelson Jr., the BAFTA-nominated, prolific indie designer known for high-concept games like Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator, is attached to Stranger Things VR as a writer. Nelson Jr. was narrative designer for Hypnospace Outlaw, one of my personal favorite games of the past few years and a great example of how to balance nostalgic gameplay (browsing a very '90s fake internet) with storytelling that naturally fits and elevates the gameplay.

Put me down as cautiously optimistic. The reception to this Stranger Things game could inform whether Netflix invests more in VR with other franchises or creators, which makes it especially interesting to see the company take this direction with it.

Let it Holoride

It was around this time last year that I first laid eyes on the Vive Flow, a slim, phone-tethered HTC VR headset that it launched for $499. As I checked out the headset and mulled over HTC's pitch for the device, I wondered where it might later pop up–with other Vive headsets already suited for the home, office, training settings, and LBEs, where else might Flow fit?

I'll admit, I didn't think about cars. Holoride, the in-car VR entertainment spawned from Audi, is using the Flow (and an 8BitDo gamepad) to form the hardware basis for its system starting at €‎699.

That's a notable shift for Holoride, which partnered with Pico as it began courting interest for its development kit last year. Comfort is one of the key hurdles Holoride needs to clear if it has any hope of taking off–yes, that chiefly concerns comfortably matching VR scenes to the movement of the car the user is riding in, but it also goes for basic headset comfort. The Flow wasn't purpose built for use in cars, but going for a smaller device with a cable makes a good deal of sense here. No need to overspec for something bigger and more capable when the intended use case is about as far from physically active standalone VR as you can get.

Holoride is only available in Germany for new-model Audis for now, but has plans to launch in the United States next year. Before then, I'll be watching to see if it adds more exclusives to the lineup and if it takes a crack at resolving one issue popping up across multiple early impressions of the system: watching Netflix or YouTube videos with the headset seems to invite motion sickness in a way that Schell Games exclusive Cloudbreaker doesn't.

More news:

• Mojo Vision announced that it developed a working integration for Alexa shopping lists for its in-development AR contact lenses. The startup isn't testing this out in the wild–it only just put a working lens on the eye of CEO Drew Perkins earlier this year–but consider this a proof-of-concept that might help attract new investment. [Press release]
• The Quest Pro now has an iFixit teardown courtesy of Shahram Mokhtari. Of note, there's an empty space and a free ribbon cable that seemingly would've connected to the Time-of-Flight sensor Meta dropped. The verdict? Mokhtari says "avoid it at all costs if you’re looking for longevity in a device."
• Speaking of doing things Meta doesn't intend for its headsets, Palmer Luckey took a Quest Pro and attached explosive charges to it to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of Sword Art Online. Is the idea of making a VR headset that can actually kill the user all that funny when it comes from an actual defense contractor? You tell me. [Matthew Gault / Vice]
• New Zealand startup StretchSense closed a $7.6 million Series A to fund continued development of lightweight, stretchy motion capture gloves for VR. [Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch]
• Leia Inc., makers of commercialized 3D displays, secured $125 million in debt financing. The company launched its Lume Pad lightfield tablet for $649 last year. [Sam Sprigg / Auganix]
• Sony has acquired Beyond Sports, a Netherlands-based virtual broadcasting and AI company that bills itself as a "gateway of live sports into the metaverse." [Press release]
• Elton John has partnered with Roblox for a virtual performance and a world themed around his pop-stardom history. If you're wondering, no, I don't know if many of Roblox's young players love Elton. Maybe Rocketman was huge with tweens? [Lars Brandle / Billboard]
• Following the exit of Evans Hankey, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has a great report on Apple's struggle to find its next Jony Ive.