Do you know this from anything he or meta has explicitly said, or is it conjecture based on assuming rational behavior and working backwards to come up with the most plausible explanation?
Occam's razor still says to me that Zuckerberg just personally finds VR really cool and compelling, and decided to point his money-printing machine in its direction. Kinda like Musk and space or the Kochs and preventing local investment in public transit.
I really do think he just thinks it's neat.
I know rooms full of games industry business people that would die laughing at this suggestion. It's in the same league as talking about third party support on the Wii U.
I remember this was a big news a few years ago and stock was battered for a while.
How come it didn't seem to effect their bottomlines and stock prices now ?
Zuckerberg knows this and saw VR as a potential platform that they could own moving forward. It's why they have invested so much in it, renamed the company, and played for keeps making deals with game developers to publish their games on their store. The problem is that VR is a niche that will never crossover to the mainstream until major problems are solved with the form factor and battery life. Nobody wants a headset strapped to their face for a prolonged period of time. Even the most hardcore of gamers see their headsets collecting dust after a few months.