Just on MetaPreviously issued messageMeta's decision to completely shut down the VR version of its metaverse social platform Horizon Worlds on June 15th has taken a dramatic turn. Earlier, Meta's Chief Technology Officer, Andrew Bosworth, stated...confirmIn response to the strong demands and feedback from die-hard fans, the official team has decided to reverse course. Horizon Worlds VR will continue to operate for the "foreseeable future," but no major investments or new games will be developed in the future.
A compromised "zombie mode": retain existing space, stop creating new features.
Meta's "reversal" is less a sign of regaining confidence in the metaverse and more a public relations compromise to appease existing hardware users.
According to Andrew Bosworth, while Horizon Worlds VR escaped being forcibly shut down in June, its future operations will essentially enter a "maintenance mode." The specific impacts are as follows:
• Retain existing assets:Users can still log in through the Meta Quest headset, play existing games, and access virtual spaces created by players in the past.
• Remove the core capabilities of UGC:The "World-building" feature, which is a core experience of the metaverse, will be removed (the specific implementation time is yet to be determined), which means that the platform will lose its most important community creativity and growth momentum.
• Very minor content updates:Meta stated that it will continue to hold a small number of events, such as virtual concerts, from time to time, but will not make any major investments. This strategy is the same as the approach Meta adopted in January of this year for its VR fitness service, Supernatural, which involved "maintaining only basic operations."
The harsh reality of strategic retreat: a severe imbalance between input and return.
Looking back at Meta's decision a few weeks ago to "shut down the VR version and only retain the mobile service," it is actually in line with the company's recent development focus.
Since its high-profile launch in late 2021, Horizon Worlds has consistently fallen short of expectations. Its monthly active users are far below internal targets, and user retention has even shown a continuous downward trend. At a time when Reality Labs has been losing tens of billions of dollars annually and the company is shifting its R&D focus entirely to generative AI (such as the Llama model), drastically reducing VR staff and scaling back the "cash-burning but unprofitable" Metaverse project are the most welcome hedging moves for Wall Street investors.
