Month: September 2024

Meta, the social network formerly known as Facebook that is definitely going to rename itself Facebook in a few years, has announced that its metaverse division has made a huge loss, again, despite last year’s stunning addition of legs to avatars. The VR and metaverse division, Meta Reality Labs, lost $4.279 billion in the fourth quarter (compared to a mere $3.304 billion in the same quarter last year), with revenue of $727 million ($877 million a year ago).

The Reality Labs division used to be known as the Oculus division, before Meta decided it didn’t like that name, and is now the umbrella under which both VR and the wider metaverse project is accounted for. This was the quarter that saw Meta increase the price of the Quest 2 headsets by $100, and launched the ludicrously priced Meta Quest Pro headset ($1500), which explains some of the revenue dip. But the real headline is that Meta doesn’t care about these losses, seeing the metaverse project as its long-term future rather than the current money pit it is.

Meta says it’s continuing to invest in the upcoming Meta Quest 3 headset, which is aimed at the broader market, the Meta Quest Pro which is intended as…

One reason people play life sims, says former Sims studio head Rod Humble, is that they offer a noncommittal way to explore self-identity. Players can try on lifestyles and experiences they’re curious about, but if they feel uncomfortable, they can always hit the eject button by deciding that they’re playing a game about their sims rather than as them. That tendency to experiment and then retreat was completely apparent during focus groups, according to Humble, because players would deny doing things he watched them do.

“Remember, we’ve just watched these people play the game,” Humble told me, “and I had people come out and lie to us, to the whole group, about what they just did.”

Humble hasn’t worked on The Sims for a while now—he’s currently making a new life sim called Life By You—and he mostly avoided direct references to the EA series when I spoke to him at GDC last week, but it’s obvious that he was referring to The Sims when describing these focus group fabrications.

“I remember a bunch of young guys,” said Humble, “and they get into the room, it’s a mixed room, and we’re like, ‘Hey, what did you do?’ and they’re like, ‘Murd…

Two months after saying that Cyberpunk 2077’s massive 2.0 patch and Phantom Liberty expansion would be the last of the “big updates” to the game, CD Projekt has surprised everyone with an announcement that update 2.1 is coming in December with “new and hotly anticipated gameplay elements.”

It’s not overstating the matter to say that Cyberpunk 2077’s redemption arc is one of the most impressive videogame turnarounds I’ve ever seen. From an infamously catastrophic launch in 2020 to a highly-regarded RPG today, the whole thing has been positively breathtaking. And now, with the game finally in proper shape, CD Projekt said in September that it was finally turning its attention to the sequel.

“2.0 and Phantom Liberty are the last big updates,” game director Gabe Amatangelo told us at the time. “We’ll do a little something more, but those are the last big ones.”

But that “little something more” sounds like it might be pretty big: “On December 5th, the same day Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition hits the shelves, we’ll release a free Update 2.1 introducing new and hotly anticipated gameplay elements,” CD Projekt tweeted today. 

To ensure everyone knows…