In my quiet moments on difficult winter days, I try to put on my Meta Quest VR headset for just half an hour. It’s not to play games or watch movies. It’s so I can move.
Supernatural, a subscription fitness service acquired by Meta in 2021, has been the closest thing to a “Peloton for VR” that I’ve ever tried. It’s not the only VR fitness app out there, not by a long shot: Beat Saber, FitXR, Les Mills BodyCombat, Thrill of the Fight, Synth Riders and Starwave are just a few others.
But the one that reached out to me, pushed me further, the one I chose, was Supernatural. This fitness app became a comfort zone and a motivator for me. I started to lean into the personality of its trainers, who felt like they were there for me. It made me want to try working out more consistently. Supernatural was the only thing that made me take my Quest on vacation. It was my Editors’ Choice for VR fitness experiences, and it’s part of what made me feel the Quest headsets were well worth the price of admission.
Supernatural’s mix of licensed music with rhythm boxing and dancing, set in 3D landscapes, is beautiful. But the coaches, projected as 3D video presences who speak to you during the routines, elevate the experience in ways that surprised me. And the app’s pairing with heart rate tracking made it something I could actually monitor my workouts with.
And now, basically, it’s gone.
Not gone gone: The Supernatural app is still live. But following Meta’s recent Reality Labs layoffs, Supernatural has been moved to “maintenance mode,” meaning no new workouts, music, or words of encouragement from the coaches. It’s a “zombie app,” a frozen monument in a metaverse Meta seems increasingly eager to abandon. For all intents and purposes, it’s dead. As dead as Meta’s former fitness tracking app on Quest, which vanished last year.
And as VR looks like it’s slowly being abandoned by Meta in favor of glasses, I remind myself that VR has survived waves of supposed near-death experiences before. But if Meta continues like this, what will VR apps even look like next? Will any of those we recognize even be left?
Pivot on the metaverse
This isn’t the first time Meta has shut down games and studios. We watched Echo Arena, a wonderful, free, competitive, social, zero-gravity frisbee game, disappear years ago. This time, Meta’s layoffs also included the closure of several other prominent game studios the company acquired, which made some of the best Quest games of the past few years, including Asgard’s Wrath II, Batman: Arkham Shadow, and Deadpool VR. But Supernatural’s decline hits me hardest.
Reports on Meta’s layoffs point to the company pivoting its Horizon Worlds social ecosystem away from headsets and toward phones, a direction it’s already been moving in. I don’t really use Horizon Worlds, despite Meta’s continuous attempts to funnel every part of the Quest experience into it. My teenage kids don’t either, even though they love playing some games on Quest. And on their own iPads and laptops, they play things like Minecraft or Roblox. They won’t shift to Horizon Worlds, that’s for sure.
Smart glasses, while being the hot hand, are a totally different ballgame. AI-driven, fashion-focused and, for the moment, totally incapable of running any third-party apps, Meta’s glasses are more like wearables. Meta considers them wearables, too.
But in the push to find some way to get the future on our faces, what happens to those who already found a reason, and loved that reason? Apparently, they get left behind.
VR can be the magic door to fitness motivation, but it’s being flushed down the toilet
I knew people who never cared about VR at all who bought Quest headsets to use Supernatural. I followed Supernatural’s Facebook community, where fans continuously share their fitness journeys. I went to one of Supernatural’s fan meetups once, in New York, and was impressed by the people of all ages who showed up, and felt connected.
Supernatural isn’t exactly a metaverse, per se, but in my opinion, it’s the closest thing Meta’s ever had to one. It made me feel like I had a place to go.
Meta’s also been ahead of the game on fitness in XR, an area I totally expect Apple and Google to get into once hardware becomes streamlined enough to handle it. Why wouldn’t they? For the right price, if it works, people pay up for gym memberships and trainers and equipment. Done right, XR could be the home gym of the future. It’s been that way to me, in parts, for years.
And I keep asking Meta about it, year after year. I asked Meta’s former head of VR, Mark Rabkin, why the company wasn’t expanding its fitness features more back in 2024, despite the acquisition of Supernatural and Beat Saber’s constant updates. He called Quest-based fitness, at that time, a “stable grower.”
I’ve repeatedly seen Meta place less emphasis on fitness in the Quest headset. Instead, Meta’s making fitness glasses like the Oakley Vanguard, designed for taking running, cycling or skiing. But that’s not the same thing as gently guiding me, a person who does none of those things, toward getting fit.
Smart glasses are being pushed toward those with an already aspirational fitness lifestyle. The Quest’s magic is how it opened doors for people who didn’t know where to start.
Now, with a community that looks like it’s being abandoned, I’m screaming to myself: Why? Because the profits weren’t higher? If the mission is to get dedicated believers on a platform like VR, which has always struggled to gain footholds anywhere, you shouldn’t abandon any passionate groups at all.
And now, as VR’s form looks ready to transform into something more glasses-like, more AI-infused, and maybe trying to copycat Apple and Google’s more 2D app-and-video-focused headset approach, I have to admit, even I’m confused about where Meta goes next.
The Quest’s identity crisis… and mine
The Quest, to me, is primarily a game console and fitness device. Remove those, and what do you have left? I’m not sure.
Meta wants its headsets to be a place going forward where telepresence happens, a holodeck for things we can perhaps scan at home and share with others, and a community hub. But guess what? You just flushed one community down the toilet. And stripping the Quest of its best game studios isn’t going to make anyone more likely to play games on it, either.
Now I feel confused and lost. I fell into that comforting spot of leaning on the Quest as a tool to help balance my own personal fitness life. Working out in VR in Supernatural became a goal on my own daily checklist — I didn’t always hit it, but I wanted to.
I could still go back and try workouts on it, now, but why would anyone keep subscribing? I had a sense of those recorded coaching sessions, delivered by actual trainers on the Supernatural team, who were there for me each week. Waiting for me. That illusion is broken now.
Thousands of those old workouts remain, but they’re ghosts. It doesn’t mean they don’t have value, but the coaches have said their goodbyes on their social feeds.
Mark Harari, one of the coaches in Supernatural who I was lucky to meet in person two years ago, sent me a message when I told him how lost I felt: “I think the most important thing I want people to know is how much we, the Coaches and the entire team, truly loved every moment of this journey together. Not just with each other, but with the incredible community who supported us every step of the way. We did this for them. For every athlete who discovered how strong, courageous, and capable they truly are. That’s what this adventure was all about. And if Supernatural impacted your life in a positive way, if it brought you joy and led you to a better life… then keep doing it. Get in that headset and keep celebrating all we created together- because it was always for you.”
I should probably just make my own personal fitness plans now, and not rely on services that might suddenly disappear. All things go away eventually, but isn’t this the biggest problem with the immersive, subscription-based digital lifestyles we’re all being asked to buy into? We are asked to move in, get invested and feel connected. And then we have no control when it’s gone. We’re left feeling betrayed.
Supernatural is just one app, you might say. I know I can find other VR apps to motivate me, and I’m going to remind myself to do that. And yes, the workouts I did still matter. I can build on that. But odds are strong I’ll be less likely to pick up the Quest for the next few months. And I’m sure I won’t be the only one.
It’s pretty clear Meta would prefer we all buy smart glasses anyway. Except that Meta is far from the only company diving headlong into the smart glasses space. Right now, Meta has had a unique and affordable advantage in VR, but that advantage might be slipping away right before our eyes. After all, Valve’s Steam Frame is just around the corner.
The future of XR headsets and their software, even for a seasoned tech vet like me, has just gotten murkier than ever. But Mark’s right. I should keep doing what I started, even if it’s somewhere else. The ideas that Supernatural put out there will resurface again, no doubt. But it might not be Meta doing it next time.
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