Meta just pulled the plug on its VR-first metaverse dream. The company is splitting Horizon Worlds away from its Quest VR platform and pivoting almost exclusively to mobile, marking one of the most significant strategic retreats since Mark Zuckerberg bet the company on virtual reality. The shift comes after Meta laid off 10% of its Reality Labs division, shuttered three VR studios, and discontinued its workplace metaverse - a tacit admission that the VR revolution isn't happening on Meta's timeline.
Meta is abandoning the core promise of its metaverse. After years of pushing virtual reality as the future of social connection, the company just announced it's shifting Horizon Worlds - the centerpiece of its metaverse vision - away from VR headsets and onto smartphones.
"We're explicitly separating our Quest VR platform from our Worlds platform and shifting the focus of Worlds to be almost exclusively mobile," Samantha Ryan, Reality Labs' VP of content, wrote in a developer blog post today. It's a stunning reversal for a platform that launched in VR in late 2021 as Meta's flagship metaverse experience.
The announcement caps a brutal few months for Meta's VR ambitions. The company laid off about 10% of its Reality Labs division earlier this year, closed three VR game studios including Twisted Pixel and Sanzaru Games, stopped producing new content for Supernatural (its popular VR fitness app), and discontinued Horizon Workrooms, its workplace metaverse product. Each cut felt like a small retreat. This one's different - it's a full strategic pivot.
