Meta’s biggest swing on trying to create a social network for VR is dying a quick death in June. Horizon Worlds, a platform that Meta said would be deemphasized for VR in favor of mobile earlier this year, is disappearing from VR on June 15.
The news, which broke yesterday, was a shock to people like myself who thought Meta would at least keep access to certain community-made VR experiences, like AA support groups, running. That’s definitely not the case. Horizon Worlds won’t be accessible at all after June 15 in Meta’s own Quest headsets.
Meta said it would deprioritize its VR metaverse app last month, but this latest news confirms the full pivot to mobile for Horizon Worlds, a platform I never used much and angered many VR devs who found it stole attention from games on Meta’s app store. Instead, Meta will continue building Horizon Worlds as a mobile app for phones to compete with Roblox and similar apps.
The end goal here is equally unclear: Will future Meta headsets perhaps work with phones to access these experiences? Doubtful, I’d say, considering Meta still doesn’t have a true way to bridge any of its headsets or glasses to be completely phone-powered beyond simple streaming of audio and video. The company is also pulling back on its impressive space-capturing app Hyperscape Capture that it released in beta last year, removing its ability to share scans with other people in headsets.
Meta has been pulling back on VR this year, from shutting down its fitness app Supernatural to closing several of the highest-profile game studios it acquired. The big question is whether Meta is eventually going to shut down VR altogether someday.
Meta says no, and reports say a new VR headset is coming next year. But all the things I’ve been seeing so far suggest Meta is pivoting completely to AI and AR glasses. Meta’s glasses can’t yet handle the features that Quest headsets have offered. At this rapid rate of shifts to the company’s XR strategies, I don’t know if they ever will.
