Meta Quest 2's Super Bowl Commercial Didn't Have The Reaction They Hoped For

Meta's big Super Bowl 2022 commercial revolved around the Quest 2 virtual reality headset, but it didn't quite resonate with viewers the way the company had likely hoped. Rather than presenting VR and the company's metaverse as an interesting companion to one's daily life, the commercial left many viewers feeling despondent over its seemingly dystopian outlook on the future.

The Quest 2 Super Bowl LVI commercial, which is called "Old Friends," starts off with an energic, if not nostalgic, look at an arcade and pizza joint packed with happy customers. Animatronic characters play instruments while crooning, "Don't you forget about me," and the entire scene is quite lively... up until the moment the music cuts out, the lights go off, and the now-depressed animatronic dog is dragged off to the local pawn shop.

The commercial gets worse from there, showing the once active arcade entirely shutdown — not just closed, but permanently out of business. The store is emptied, the assets removed, and the animatronic dog is next seen staring with a depressed expression out a pawn shop's window. Thus starts the dog's new life, one leading toward increasing irrelevancy and misery. 

We see the dog eventually hauled away as garbage, lost on the side of the road, and picked at by animals. Its large, lifeless eyes continue to stare into the void, a drop of rain simulating a single tear down its face right before it comes within inches of death in a trash compactor. The animatronic is saved at the last moment, but it's not a terribly happy ending — the dog now stands in the lobby of a space center where guests can experience a space simulation using the Meta Quest 2 headset.

A visitor places the VR headset over the animatronic dog's eyes, and we get to see its first spark of excitement since its former days playing music. The dog's life is bright and exciting again, the advertisement shows, because it can finally socialize thanks to the metaverse — the same virtual world where it finds a replica of its old arcade.

Viewers are shown Meta's VR environment as a busy, welcoming place in contrast to the real world, one where, apparently, one may find themselves isolated as small businesses close and they spend their days in a lackluster job. It's clear the company was aiming to show how its VR worlds – the metaverse in particular – can be used for more than just games, also serving as a portal to a new type of social gathering where friends and strangers alike mingle.

Many Super Bowl fans didn't take it that way, however, as evidenced by the response on social media. In a tweet criticizing the commercial, user Jos. F says, "That metaverse commercial was really blatant about being like, yeah all the cool independent businesses are closing, but you can just come to this grotesque fake simulation instead! And the best part is, big tech companies get the profits instead of normal people!"

Others summed up their thoughts with fewer words, saying on Twitter and YouTube that Meta's Quest 2 commercial was "really depressing" and, in some cases, it made the viewers cry. On YouTube, one user left a comment that reads, "Facebook, we went over this. This was for the next adaptation of Orwell's 1984, not an ad." Meanwhile, a different Twitter user wondered whether the Super Bowl commercial was meant to be anti-metaverse. 

It's fair to say that the reception to the metaverse in general probably hasn't quite lived up to what Meta hoped it would. When Mark Zuckerberg's company rebranded from Facebook to Meta back in October 2021, the big pitch was that it would set the social network up for a future where virtual reality interactions with friends and family were seen as just as normal as real-life experiences.

"I'm proud of what we've built so far, and I'm excited about what comes next," Zuckerberg said at the time, "as we move beyond what's possible today, beyond the constraints of screens, beyond the limits of distance and physics, and towards a future where everyone can be present with each other, create new opportunities and experience new things. It is a future that is beyond any one company and that will be made by all of us."

Problem is, the world doesn't seem quite ready for the metaverse – and the metaverse isn't really ready for the world, either. Zuckerberg's big ideas met with skepticism, its decision to ditch the recognizable Oculus branding and relaunch the Quest 2 under the Meta banner managed to burn most of the VR goodwill that Oculus had built, and investors were spooked by just how much cash the company was burning on trying to make the metaverse happen.

While Meta's traditional apps and services – like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – had a bumper 2021, it sank over $10 billion on its Reality Labs division. That's the group working on metaverse products and services, and the huge disparity left shareholders fleeing. With Zuckerberg promising even more investment is still needed, and the reception to this uncomfortable Super Bowl ad showing the public clearly isn't onboard with the concept of living in a virtual reality world yet, it looks like Meta may have lost the big game this time around, not the Bengals.