Meta has announced the shutdown of Horizon Worlds on its Quest headsets. The client will be removed from the store on March 31, and the virtual service will cease operation on June 15, remaining only on mobile devices. This move, following major cuts in Reality Labs, marks a new retreat in its metaverse bet. The platform, which motivated the company's name change, failed to achieve the expected adoption.
The technical and adoption challenges of VR social worlds 🤔
Horizon Worlds faced technical and user experience obstacles from the start. Its creation system, although accessible, generated environments with a simple aesthetic that distanced itself from many users' visual expectations. Latency in complex social interactions and the difficulty in consistently finding attractive experiences hindered its growth. It competed in a space where VRChat offered greater freedom and customization.
The metaverse slips away from us... again 😮💨
It seems the immersive future will have to wait a little longer. After spending billions and changing the entire company's name, the flagship project quietly exits through the back door of the headsets. Perhaps the problem wasn't the technology, but that no one managed to find something fun to do in those worlds beyond floating without legs. A lesson: building a virtual universe is complicated, but getting people to want to spend time in it is even more so.