n internal report has shown that Facebook employs nearly 10,000 people in its departments working on augmented reality and virtual reality devices. That number illustrates that the Reality Labs division accounts for almost a fifth of the people working at Facebook worldwide.
That information is a clear demonstration that Facebook has been significantly accelerating its AR and VR efforts. A report back in 2017, noted that the Oculus VR division had just over one thousand employees at the time when the total number of employees at Facebook was nearly 19,000, indicating a percentage somewhere north of five percent.
Since then, Facebook has pivoted its VR focus away from Oculus Rift-style wired headsets by launching the Oculus Quest and Quest 2, which are standalone wireless devices which do not need to be connected to a computer. The Oculus Quest 2 which retails at $299, was pre ordered five times as much as its predecessor, with a boost in sales of their existing game titles.
In Mark Zuckerberg’s most recent interview last week on Facebook’s AR and VR ambitions, the CEO stated:
“Today, most of what Facebook does is…we’re building on top of other people’s platforms… I think it really makes sense for us to invest deeply to help shape what I think is going to be the next major computing platform, this combination of augmented and virtual reality, to make sure that it develops in this way that is fundamentally about people being present with each other and coming together.”
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