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

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.