Meta isn’t shutting down its VR metaverse after all

Meta returns to its plan to close the VR version of its metaverse. The company now plans to support Horizon Worlds in VR for the “foreseeable future,” although users shouldn’t expect any new games, CTO Andrew Bosworth said in an update.

“We will continue to make Horizon Worlds work in VR for existing games, to support the fans who have reached out to us,” Bosworth said in a post on Instagram. “For people who already have games they love and use in Horizon Worlds, [they] We will be able to download the Horizon Worlds app and use it in VR for the foreseeable future.”

The reversal comes after Meta said earlier this week that Horizon Worlds in VR would no longer be accessible after June 15 as the company shifts its Metaverse experiences to mobile. Although Horizon never gained popularity even among VR enthusiasts, Meta’s decision to shut it down was just the latest sign of how the company has strayed from its Metaverse ambitions as it pursues AI “superintelligence.”

In his Instagram post, Bosworth said there was “a lot of misinformation” about the company’s plans. “We announced, ‘Hey, we’re moving away from Horizon Worlds in VR,’ and the headline is Horizon is dead,” he said. “That’s not the case. And likewise, virtual reality is not dead. We continue to invest heavily.” The company laid off more than 1,000 employees from its Metaverse division and closed three virtual reality studios earlier this year. Bosworth said the company is still working on its next two generations of VR headsets.

He described the metaverse as a “misunderstood concept” that was never meant to encompass virtual reality alone. He said AR was also part of the vision and even people scrolling on their phones could be part of the metaverse. “When someone is using their phone and you’re physically with them, they’re at the table with you, and yet when you’re talking to them, they can’t hear anything because they’ve transported themselves through the light rectangle into a digital space,” he said. “Maybe they’re scrolling, maybe they’re in the text world, but like they’ve transported themselves. So we’ve always had that internally – at least me and Mark – this very broad construct of the metaverse.”