Meta Horizon Worlds launched five years ago as a metagame world that needed to be explored using the Meta Quest headset. Mark Zuckerberg's dream was to bring the world of Ready Player One to the real world with Horizon Worlds being a portal to different virtual worlds like the planets in Steven Spielberg's film.
But metagames are no longer Meta's focus, with investments now being made in developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) through Meta Superintelligence Labs. This morning, Meta announced that Horizon Worlds would be separated from Reality Lab. This means that the focus will no longer be on the virtual reality (VR) world and that Horizon Worlds will now be a regular smartphone app. Horizon Worlds has been offered on Android smartphones since 2023 for those who don't own Meta Quest.
This is another sign that the future of the metagame world on Meta is getting more and more unclear as it transitions to a regular video game platform. Three popular games at the moment are Grow A Garden, Steal A Brainrot, and Yeet Yourself.
Although Horizon Worlds has been separated from the VR world, Meta says they are still committed to supporting third-party app developers for Meta Quest. They will also still release new hardware in the future.
The statement given is less than convincing as Meta closed several of its Meta Quest app development studios and the size of their metamesta team was drastically reduced a few months ago.
