John Carmack: Virtual reality giant leaves dead


New York
CNN

Video game pioneer John Carmack has resigned from his consulting position at Meta with “mixed feelings” about the “end of his decade in virtual reality,” he announced in a blog post. Facebook share Friday.

Carmack stuck around more than company A $10 billion investment in virtual reality technology. And though he still believes in the potential value of virtual reality, he questioned Meta’s competence, saying in his post that the company has “a tremendous amount of people and resources, but we’re constantly self-sabotaging and squandering efforts.”

“It was a struggle for me,” Carmack wrote. “I have a voice on the highest levels here, so I feel like I should be able to move things along, but I’m clearly not convincing enough.”

Carmack has been celebrated for his work developing Wolfenstein 3D and Quake and Doom, and he co-founded the video game company id Software. He was an early advocate of virtual reality, and thought it was not uncommon for him to criticize meta.

Carmack became CTO of Oculus in 2013. Meta He bought Oculus VR in 2014 for $2 billion, and now sells the Meta Quest 2 and Quest Pro headphones. Cormack stood by the headset, calling it a “good product” despite his “complaints” about the software.

“Successful products make the world a better place,” Cormack said. “Everything could have happened a little faster and worked out better if different decisions had been made, but we’ve built something very close to the right thing.”

Carmack still believes Meta is the best company to integrate VR technology into the mainstream. CEO Mark Zuckerberg Announced in October 2021 that he would take the company beyond social media and start building the so-called metaverse — but at a huge cost.

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“I think my impact on the sidelines has been positive, but it’s never been a major driver,” Carmack said.

When asked for comment, Meta pointed to Carmack’s post and a tweet from CTO Andrew Bosworth.

“It is impossible to overstate the impact it has had on our business and the industry as a whole,” Bosworth said chirp. “Your technical prowess is widely recognized, but it is your relentless focus on creating value for people that we will remember most. Thank you and see you in VR.”

Meta recently announced about it Lay off 11,000 employees, the most significant job cuts in the tech giant’s history amid soaring inflation, soaring interest rates and recession fears. meta Lost $9.4 billion in the first nine months of 2022 on the metaverse’s efforts and expects losses from the unit to “grow significantly year-over-year” in 2023.

— CNN’s Claire Duffy and Rachel Metz contributed to this report.

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