Meta’s Metaverse App Is Vanishing From VR June 15
Meta’s biggest breakthrough in creating a social network for virtual reality is dying a quick death in June. Horizon Worldsa platform that Meta said would be less focused on VR in favor of mobile earlier this year, is disappearing from VR on June 15.
The news, which broke yesterday, came as a shock to people like me who thought Meta would at least retain access to some community-created VR experiences, like AA support groups. This is certainly not the case. Horizon Worlds will no longer be accessible at all after June 15 at Meta Quest Helmets.
Meta said it would deprioritize its Metaverse VR app last month, but this latest news confirms the full pivot to mobile for Horizon Worlds, a platform I never used much and which angered many VR developers who found it distracted from games on Meta’s App Store. Instead, Meta will continue to create Horizon Worlds as a mobile app for phones to compete with Roblox and similar apps.
The end goal here is also unclear: Will future Meta headsets perhaps work with phones to access these experiences? Doubtful, I’d say, given that Meta still doesn’t have a real way to hook up any of its headsets or glasses to be fully phone-powered beyond just streaming audio and video. The company is also withdrawing from its impressive space capture app. Hyperscape capture which it released in beta last year, removing its ability to share analytics with other people using headsets.
Meta backed away from VR this year, after shutting down its fitness app Supernatural to the closure of several of the most high-profile game studios it acquired. The big question is whether Meta will eventually shut down VR altogether 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 moving completely towards AI and AR glasses. Meta’s glasses can’t handle yet the functionalities that Quest headsets offer. At this rapid rate of evolution of the company’s XR strategies, I don’t know if they ever will.
