Meta’s big swing in creating social media for VR looked like it was dying a quick death in June. Horizon Worldsthe platform that Meta said would be focused on VR in favor of mobile earlier this year, will disappear from VR on June 15. And then, on Wednesday, Meta changed its mind. Kind of.
The early news, which came out on Tuesday, shocked people like me who thought that Meta would at least maintain access to some VR experiences made by the public, like the AA support groups, who work on Meta itself. Look for earphones. Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s CTO, apparently changed course after the AMA where he announced that existing VR apps at Horizon Worlds will continue to work. For now, at least.
“We decided just today, in fact, that we’re going to keep Horizon Worlds running in VR for the existing games, to support the fans who have reached out, like you, who really care about that. Those are the Horizon Unity Runtime games. They’re not going to run on mobile. They’re going to be running in VR. We’re not bringing new games either,” said Bosworth.
“A lot of our energy goes to mobile and the Meta Horizon Engine there; the reason for that is because that’s where a lot of the consumer and creator power is already there, so we’re leaning towards that. But yeah, you know, for people who already have their favorite games that they’re using in Horizon Worlds, you’ll be able to download the VR app that’s available in Worlds and use it in the future.”
Meta said it would put its VR metaverse plan down last month, and it’s still a plan. Horizon Worlds was a platform I didn’t use much, and it pissed off a lot of VR developers who found it stole the spotlight from Meta app store games. Instead, Meta will continue to build Horizon Worlds as a mobile app for phones to compete with Roblox and other similar apps.
But the ultimate goal here is equally unclear: Will future Meta headsets perhaps work with phones to achieve this experience? Reluctantly, I’d say, considering the Meta still doesn’t have a true way to integrate any of its headsets or glasses through phones to be completely powered by the phone without simple audio and video streaming. The company is also rolling out its impressive landscape photography app Hyperscape Capture released it in beta last year, removing its ability to share headsets with other people.
Keeping the Horizon Worlds apps running is the right move, especially since Meta spent a lot of time and money convincing people to use it in the first place. But the latest pivot suggests that Horizon Worlds in VR is on borrowed time.
Meta has been backing away from VR in all sorts of ways this year, from shutting down its fitness program Supernatural closing down the most high profile game studios we’ve found. The big question is whether Meta will eventually shut down VR entirely one day.
Meta says no, and reports say a new VR headset is coming next year. But everything I’ve seen so far suggests that Meta is turning to AI and AR glasses entirely. Meta mirrors are currently not supported features Quest headsets are provided. At this rapid rate of transition to the company’s XR strategy, I don’t know if they ever will.
