You don’t need special glasses to see why Meta Platforms announced its latest mixed-reality headset, the Quest 3, on Thursday, just days before Apple is expected to unveil its own entry to the field. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has literally bet the company, and its name, on the metaverse, but the results so far have been disappointing. 

It’s been almost a decade since Meta, née Facebook, stepped into another reality by buying Oculus. Meta’s headsets are the clear market leader with nearly 50% market share, according to IDC. But the promised metaverse future has not arrived. Sales in Meta’s Reality Labs unit fell by half in the first quarter and operating loss grew by one-third, to $4 billion. The company has told investors it expects the unit’s operating losses to grow “in 2023 and beyond.”