Meta Is Taking VR Out of 'Horizon Worlds'
Meta just announced a seismic change to its 3D social platform Horizon Worlds. The company is removing Meta Quest users to focus on mobile users. So Horizon Worlds, originally a VR-only platform, now a mix of both VR users and mobile users, will become a mobile-only platform in the near future. In a blog post aimed at developers, Samantha Ryan, VP of Content at Meta's Reality Labs, said the company is "separating our Quest VR platform from our Worlds platform in order to create more space for both products to grow."
"We’re doubling down on the VR developer ecosystem while shifting the focus of Worlds to be almost exclusively mobile. By breaking things down into two distinct platforms, we’ll be better able to clearly focus on each," Ryan wrote.
Announced in 2019 as a "social VR world" called Facebook Horizon, the platform was renamed Horizon Worlds two years later and was an integral part of Meta's vision of a future "Metaverse," but Worlds never really caught on with users. Despite the money Facebook/Meta clearly devoted to the platform, its monthly user count was only around 200,000 in 2022.
Meta says it's still committed to virtual reality
According to Ryan, 86% of time people spend in their VR headsets is spent with third-party apps, so it's not surprising that Meta would pull back from first-party VR. Last month, the company shuttered its three AAA VR game development companies, stopped updating its first-party subscription-based fitness app Supernatural, and laid off around 10% of its Reality Labs division. Ryan says Meta will continue supporting third-party VR developers and releasing hardware, promising the company has "robust roadmap of future VR headsets" tailored to "different audience segments" on tap, but offered no specific details as yet.
Meta's focus on mobile
While the change marks a definitive end to Horizon Worlds as a VR-first destination, the company plans to leverage the massive user base of Meta's Instagram and Facebook to make Worlds competitive with social platforms like Roblox. The company reports 4x growth in Horizon mobile users in 2025."We’re in a strong position to deliver synchronous social games at scale," Ryan wrote.
A sad end for VR users of Worlds
There are around five billion smart phone users worldwide, all potential customers to Worlds, compared to an estimated 20-30 million Quest users, so the math definitely makes sense in terms of growing a platform and stock price, but it's sad for the (relatively few) people who have found a home on Horizon Worlds. They'll be able to use mobile platform, but it isn't the same: the sense of scale and engagement can't be replicated on a small, 2D screen. I recently spent a lot of time looking for life in the VR version of Worlds, and it's a unique place, an undiscovered country where strange little communities have taken up residence in a massive, deserted shopping mall. If you can, strap on a headset and poke around a little before the plug is pulled.