January 02, 2023: -Over a year after transferring his company’s name to Meta and committing to spend a lot of dollars developing the metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg’s commitment to virtual reality is far from paying off.

This year’s sales of VR headsets in the U.S. refused by 2% from a year to $1.1 billion as of December, according to data. Facebook’s advertising business generates that much revenue every three days.

With the ad firms mired in a slump, Zuckerberg looks to VR devices and related technology to pull Meta in the coming days. But data from analyst company CCS Insight reveals worldwide shipments of VR headsets and augmented reality devices decreasing over 12% year over year to 9.6 million in 2022.

The suggestions of VR headset sales and shipments make a problematic picture for Meta, whose stock price has previously about two-thirds of its value this year. Zuckerberg has stated he’s playing the long game with the metaverse, expecting it to take up to a decade to go mainstream and thinking it will host hundreds of billions of dollars in commerce.

It’s not only Meta. In the past ten years, numerous venture companies and other tech companies have wagered big on a futuristic world of virtual work, education, fitness and sports.

According to several analysts, meta’s Quest 2 headset, released in 2020, is the leader in the VR market. Competing devices from companies such as Valve, HP and Sony show a small fraction of the place.

Sales of Meta’s flagship Quest device decreased in 2022, a refusal that can be attributed to the device’s in 2021, Ben Arnold stated from NPD’s consumer electronics employee.

“VR had a holiday in 2021,” Arnold stated, which refers to various promotions that supported improved sales of the devices at a time when gaming consoles such as Sony’s PlayStation 5 were in short supply. “It was a good time in the previous year to get one of the products, and VR crushed it.”

According to NPD, VR headset earnings in the U.S. doubled in 2021 from almost $530 million in 2020. A confluence of factors giving to lower sales and shipments in 2022.

Nearly for a few years and, like other consumer electronics fractions, it has lost some appeal as it’s aged. And while Meta commented on a new VR headset in the fall, the Quest Pro is geared toward businesses and costs $1,100 over the Quest 2, which pushes it even further out of reach for many VR enthusiasts.

Meta stated that over the summer to raise the Quest 2 by $100, citing inflationary things.