Meta pulls the plug: VR support for Horizon Worlds ends in summer
Meta's metaverse platform Horizon Worlds is to live on on smartphones. The VR version will be discontinued in the summer.
Meta's metaverse project ends on the platform where it began.
(Image: Meta)
Meta will remove its metaverse platform Horizon Worlds from Meta Quest on June 15. The virtual worlds will no longer be accessible in virtual reality. Instead, the platform will only be available on classic screens in the future and will remain accessible via the smartphone app “Meta Horizon” and on the web. Parts of Horizon Worlds will be shut down later this month, including Horizon Central, which served as the starting area and central hub for the virtual worlds.
One of the best features of the Meta Quest is also affected: the photorealistic hyperscapes will lose their social component on March 24. While Quest users can still scan their surroundings and visit the digital image after processing by Meta, they can no longer invite other VR users to view it together. The reason is that the 3D scans were previously published as virtual worlds in Horizon Worlds and were based on its multiplayer infrastructure.
Meta's new VR strategy
The end of Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest was already apparent at the beginning of the year when Meta made a radical change, of course, in its VR strategy. At that time, Meta closed many of its VR studios, laid off 1500 employees from the Reality Labs division responsible for future technologies, and indicated that Horizon Worlds would primarily be tailored to mobile devices rather than VR headsets in the future. Now comes the complete removal from Meta's VR offering.
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Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth admitted in January that Meta had overextended itself by developing Horizon Worlds for two very different media simultaneously and that the user experience on Meta Quest had suffered as a result. The focus is now on streamlining the Quest operating system and developing new hardware. Meta has already confirmed that two new VR headsets are in development.
Meta also wants to continue working on Horizon Worlds, but for now only on smartphones, where the potential target audience is significantly larger. Meta hopes to take market share from established metaverse platforms such as “Roblox” and “Fortnite” here. To this end, the company is relying on the Horizon Engine introduced in September and on AI tools that are intended to simplify development for Horizon Worlds.
(dmk)
