I cant understand why people think a consumer-hostile company would be able to improve the experience enough to reach broader audiences.
People will try it for an hour or two when they boot up their oculus. Realize being in a room of shouting tweens is not fun, and then never try it again.
I'd like to take advantage of this moment to share furries making fun of Metaverse, on VRChat (1m 30s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGmlhHvm-Tc
Game companies haven't been stuck in the 2000s. Nowadays they are legitimate media businesses. Just look at what Riot did with Arcane, or Epic with Travis Scott's Fortnite concert. That actually felt metaverse-ish compared to the geriatric experience of Facebook's VR games.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYeFAlVC8qU)
If you look at China its even more clear that game companies are way beyond just making games. Moving into ads isn't that hard, delivering actual content and really understanding young people very much is.
I don't think that's true. Game developer company culture is heavily oriented towards making and selling products to consumers. They know how to make games people will pay for, and the entire business and culture revolves around that.
With Meta and other ad-driven companies, the people aren't the consumers, they're the product. The whole incentive structure and architecture of the company is fundamentally different. Think about how a company like Facebook or Google has an entire army of sales people and enormous apps like AdWords and Facebook Ads Manager that are how the company actually makes money. Game companies don't have that kind of stuff.
What they have is a bunch of programmers who know 3D rendering and networking. But Meta can simply hire those people—and game devs are used to bouncing around every couple of years—and they are. Several of my old EA coworkers are at Meta know working on it.