Earlier this month, Meta shared an announcement that it would be moving away from supporting virtual reality with Horizon Worlds — its massively expensive metaverse project. Horizon Worlds, which originally launched in 2021, was meant to be the next big thing when it arrived. However, it was far from that, and Meta struggled to get anyone much interested in the metaverse and what it had to offer, despite even offering Horizon Worlds on third-party hardware at one point. While development on Horizon Worlds isn’t ending completely, the news that Meta was shutting down the VR side of the app was unsurprising to many.
However, it seems that Meta isn’t able to make up its mind on what it wants to do, as the company has now announced that it will no longer be shuttering the VR version of Horizon Worlds. But it also won’t continue with the way things have been. So, what exactly is changing about Horizon Worlds and what will stay the same?
Well, ultimately, everything is staying the same. That is, Horizon Worlds will continue to be available on Meta Quest headsets, and you can still jump in and enjoy everything that the app has to offer if you want. However, some things will be different. Instead of focusing on the VR element of Horizon Worlds, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth says that the company will instead focus on the mobile side of things, as that is where most of the user base has found its footing.
You’ll still be able to experience Horizon Worlds in VR
While support for Horizon Worlds will continue on Quest VR headsets, like the Meta Quest 3, it sounds like Meta will shift its priority for new content directly to mobile and web platforms. That’s because Bosworth noted on a podcast that “there’s a much bigger audience in mobile, and it’s having a really positive pickup on mobile.” Further, he notes that right now the team is having to build all of Horizon Worlds’ experiences twice — once for mobile and then again when it comes to the VR side of things. However, if they remove the need for VR, then they can scale up development quite a bit.
Exactly whether or not this means new Horizon Worlds content won’t come to VR at all is unclear. Bosworth says that development will not be exclusive to mobile but “almost exclusively,” which sounds like that could change in the future. That comment does raise some serious questions about just how long Meta will continue to support the virtual reality portions. While fans might have been able to speak out and keep things open for now, if Meta stops developing new content for Horizon Worlds in VR, then that part of the metaverse will stagnate and eventually die off.
So far, Meta has invested over $70 billion in chasing Zuckerberg’s dream of the metaverse. But even letting teenagers into Horizon Worlds in 2023 wasn’t enough to gain much traction. Now, as the company continues its transition to more mobile-focused development, it will need to really draw consumers in if it wants to bring that dream to a proper reality — in VR or on mobile.
