Meta creating a physical building for its metaverse products

Yahoo Finance Live looks at Meta's real-life business investments to showcase metaverse products and VR headsets.

Video transcript

- Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live, everyone. Whether you love it or hate it or still trying to understand it, we're talking about the metaverse. Now Meta is making an interesting move by opening its first ever physical retail store. It's going to be opening in California on May 9.

So you'll be able to experience the VR headsets and get really immersive experience. But a lot of people are wondering, why do we need this? And is this actually going to make more people want to join the metaverse? So Brad, I'm going to have you weigh in here. Is this something that you would be interested in visiting or taking part?

- No, short answer. I think--

- Hard past.

- I think for what it does show, though, is that Meta is going to need to get people to experience what the actual immersive technology is going to be that they need to engage with in order to tap into the metaverse and all of the reality that they're trying to drive at the end of the day, too.

- I think they were really surprised in a survey from Piper Sandler, social media survey, that showed nearly half of Gen Zers are either unsure or not interested in the metaverse. So they're saying, all right, we got to let them try it out. We've got to let them feel it and see it.

Here's the problem. Meta misstep here. You're asking people to come to your campus.

It's not just in California. It's on their Burlingame campus. I got an idea.

If you want people to try it, go to a mall, find an abandoned store, which there are thousands across the country anywhere near an Apple store. Anywhere close to an Apple store, set up shop there. That's how you reach an audience. That's how you get people to come in and try these goggles and see what it's about. I just don't understand the business model of trying to get Gen Zers, who you need, to visit your campus.

- Rochelle, I would be interested in knowing have you engaged with any of the headsets that they've got, the portal, which they've been trying to move into homes for two years now, basically?

- I think this is the equivalent of trying to make fetch happen. Who is asking for this? Who wants this? I mean, like we got like the VR goggles at home.

I was like already we're staring at screens most of the time. I don't want another thing on my face to have to deal with. And so I'm really curious to see who their target market is. I mean, you're seeing a lot of businesses invest in this.

You're seeing a lot of these virtual items that you can buy online but you don't actually get to use outside of the metaverse. I'm not sold on it. I'm not particularly interested in it.

And then you have sort of Roblox, which is kind of the mini version of a metaverse. But again, you're seeing kids coming off of that once things start to be opening after the pandemic. So maybe this is like the long move by Meta. Personally, I'm just not seeing it right now.

- You hit on Roblox. And what I want to ask Brad is there's three sectors that Mark Zuckerberg is focusing on-- working, socializing, and gaming. He thinks the metaverse is going to be home for all three of those. Pick one. Which do you think is actually going to be effective? Because it ain't going to be all three.

- It's not. And it'll be interesting to see if gaming drives the socialization at the end of the day. Perhaps, that's the entry point. But the one major area that investors are going to be paying close attention to, $10 billion. That's how much that they're expecting these investments to reduce the overall operating profit by in 2021 alone and now going into 2022. Still a key number to watch here. We've got to leave things there for this Monday afternoon.