Meta has walked back its plan to axe Horizon Worlds VR.
In a since-expired Instagram Story Q&A, Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth confirmed that the company isn’t taking down the Quest version of the online multiplayer game. “We have decided, just today in fact, that we will keep Horizon Worlds working in VR for existing games to support the fans who’ve reached out,” said Bosworth. He added that the game will remain available on Meta Quest “for the foreseeable future.”
Earlier this week, the company said it would be delisting Horizon Worlds on Quest on March 31 ahead of a complete shutdown on June 15. At the time, the company said it would eventually shift focus to the mobile version of Horizon Worlds. That said, Bosworth reiterated that “most of our energy” is still going towards mobile and that no new games will be coming to the VR social platform.
All of this comes after Bosworth himself recently admitted that VR hasn’t been growing as much or as quickly as Meta has hoped. In the case of Horizon Worlds, specifically, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2022 that the game only reached a few hundred thousand players at most, many of whom don’t even stick with it for more than a month. All of this has led the company’s Reality Labs division to incur losses of over US$70 billion (about C$96 billion) since 2021.
While Meta’s overly ambitious plans for the metaverse never panned out, there are some cases of smaller-scale efforts working out. Both Fortnite and Roblox have remained among the most popular online titles for years, serving as “forever games” in which steady streams of both curated and user-generated content keep bringing people back. In both cases, though, they’re free to download and available on pretty much every platform and not relegated to something as niche as VR.
Going forward, then, Meta says it will prioritize mobile, AI and wearables. One of its most anticipated upcoming products is the Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses, which recently launched in the U.S. but was delayed in international markets like Canada due to “unprecedented demand and limited inventory.”
Via: Engadget
