Meta’s biggest swing at creating a social network for VR looked like it was 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, was going to disappear from VR on June 15. And then, yesterday, Meta changed its mind. Sort of.
The original news, which broke Tuesday, was a shock to people like me who thought Meta would at least keep access to certain community-made VR experiences, like AA support groups, running in Meta’s own Quest headsets. Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s CTO, apparently changed course after an AMA where he announced that existing VR apps in Horizon Worlds would keep running. For now, at least.
“We have decided just today, in fact, that we will keep Horizon Worlds working in VR for existing games, to support the fans who reached out, like yourself, who really care about that. Those are the Horizon Unity Runtime games. They’re not going to work on mobile. They’ll just be working on VR. 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 because that’s where most of the consumer and creator energy already was, and so we’re kind of leaning into that. But yeah, you know, for people who already have games they like that they’re using in Horizon Worlds, you’ll be able to download the Horizon Worlds app and use it in VR for the foreseeable future,” said Bosworth.
Meta said it would deprioritize its VR metaverse app last month, and that’s still the plan. Horizon Worlds was 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.
But 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 via phones yet 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.
Keeping Horizon Worlds apps running is the right move, especially since Meta spent so much time and money on convincing people to use it in the first place. But the latest pivot to a pivot suggests that Horizon Worlds in VR is still on borrowed time.
Meta has been pulling back on VR in all sorts of ways 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.
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