Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse ambitions are facing a reality check. His company is scaling back the VR support for Horizon Worlds, the app that was supposed to help take his “metaverse” concept mainstream, but has actually found more traction among phone users.
In an official forum post, Meta initially announced that the company is preparing to phase out the VR support for Horizon Worlds as the platform pivots to becoming a “mobile-only experience.”
“You can still jump into your other favorite worlds in VR until June 15, 2026, after which the Horizon Worlds app will be removed from Quest, and Worlds will no longer be available in VR,” the company wrote.
That said, Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth is indicating the company is backtracking a bit due to user feedback. In an Instagram story on Wednesday, he said: “We have decided, just today in fact, that we will keep Horizon Worlds working in VR for existing games to support the fans who have reached out.”
“We’re not bringing new games. Again, most of our energy is going towards mobile and the Meta Horizon Engine there. The reason for that is that’s where most of the consumer and creator energy already was, and so we’re kind of leaning into that,” he added.
(Reddit/Meta)
The Horizon Worlds shift occurs nearly five years after Facebook renamed itself Meta, betting that VR and augmented reality would become the next major technology platform. Horizon Worlds has been the company’s early effort to create a sci-fi like metaverse, where people can chat and hang out, but virtually.
Zuckerberg’s company has also been investing tens of billions of dollars in the VR business. But even though Meta has sold millions of virtual reality headsets over the years, the technology has never come close to replacing smartphones or PCs; instead VR has remained more of a gaming and entertainment peripheral.
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Back in October 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported Horizon Worlds only had 200,000 users. Nearly a year later, Meta began to expand the VR platform to mobile phones. But since then, generative AI and chatbots have become the next big tech trend to take off, which Zuckerberg has also been chasing.
Last month, a Meta executive wrote about Horizon Worlds winding down the VR support, mentioning in a blog post: “Sometimes, we knock it out of the park. Other times, we get things wrong.”
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“We’re explicitly separating our Quest VR platform from our Worlds platform in order to create more space for both products to grow,” added Meta’s Samantha Ryan, VP of Content for Reality Labs — an indication that Horizon World’s VR-focus has become a burden.
Despite the pivot, Meta remains focused on improving the overall VR experience for the company’s Quest headsets. Ryan added that the company remained “the single biggest investor in the VR industry,” because Meta continues to “believe in VR as a critical technology on the path to the next computing platform.”
On Wednesday, Bosworth also pushed back on headlines suggesting that Horizon Worlds or VR is dead. “We’re talking about the next two generations of (VR) headsets we have in the pipeline,” he said in an Instagram story. He also emphasized that the metaverse concept includes augmented reality as well, which Meta has been focused on with its smart glasses products.
Still, there’s been talk of a “VR winter,” when Meta has also been cutting jobs including at the company’s VR-focused Reality Labs.
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Michael Kan
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. Earlier this year, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.
I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I’m now following how President Trump’s tariffs will affect the industry. I’m always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.
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