Horizon Worlds, the poster child of Meta’s VR ambitions, is dropping VR.
The company will now focus on mobile as part of its plans to build social virtual worlds.
The move reflects both practical realities and strategic recalibration – after years of heavy investment in Reality Labs and repeated attempts to grow a headset-based social network, Meta appears to have concluded that a VR-only audience is simply too small to support a thriving virtual world.
In a blog post, Samantha Ryan, VP of Content, Reality Labs said the move was part of the company making “decisive adjustments” to it business strategy.
“We heard your feedback loud and clear, and after a year of collecting data and running experiments, we agree. We’re removing individual worlds from our store shelves in VR, and we’re separating worlds from the Store in our mobile app. This change should result in more impressions for apps on the store.”
Accessibility Over Immersion
Horizon Worlds originally launched as a VR-centric space, built around the idea that immersive presence would drive a new era of online interaction.
Yet adoption remained modest, even as Quest hardware improved and became more affordable.
For casual users, buying a headset, learning the controls and committing to wearing it for social interaction proved a high barrier.
Mobile access could change that equation.
Nearly everyone already owns a smartphone, and logging into a virtual space becomes as simple as opening an app.
That shift mirrors the success of platforms like Roblox and Fortnite, which built massive audiences by prioritising accessibility over cutting-edge immersion.
Their experiences may not match VR’s sensory depth, but they benefit from network effects that only come with scale.
With the move, Meta appears to be acknowledging that social platforms depend more on participation than technological novelty.
Without millions of active users, even the most sophisticated virtual environment struggles to feel alive.
By targeting mobile devices first, Horizon Worlds can tap into Meta’s enormous social graph across Facebook and Instagram, potentially drawing on billions of existing connections rather than relying solely on Quest owners.
Reality Labs Under Pressure
The pivot also comes amid mounting scrutiny of Meta’s Reality Labs division.
The company has invested tens of billions of dollars into VR and augmented reality infrastructure, with limited financial return so far.
Analysts estimate that the division has incurred over $70 billion in losses since 2020, largely due to hardware development, content production, and social VR initiatives like Horizon Worlds.
Recent restructuring saw around 10 percent of the Reality Labs workforce layed-off, affecting hardware and software teams as well as in-house VR studios.
Meta has repeatably insisted this is not a retreat from mixed reality, with the company’s Chief Technology Officer, Andrew Bosworth recently saying the company was still “extremely bullish” on VR.
“Adjusting our investment profile was done so that we can continue to invest in it,” Bosworth said.
“We’re still investing more in content, for example, than anyone else. We’re investing more in content than I think even we were like four years ago.”
While first-party VR content is being scaled back, third-party developers are encouraged to fill the gap.
The company notes that the vast majority of time spent on its headsets already comes from external apps, suggesting a healthier ecosystem may depend on independent creators rather than internal studios.
Meanwhile, Meta continues to develop new hardware and invest in augmented reality projects, including smart glasses.
A Metaverse Reimagined
The mobile pivot signals a broader rethink of the metaverse concept itself.
Early marketing promised a fully immersive digital universe where work, play and social life merged seamlessly.
Reality has proved more complicated.
Users have shown enthusiasm for virtual spaces, but mostly when they are easy to access, playful and social rather than grand and transformative.
By reframing Horizon Worlds as a mobile social gaming platform, Meta may be attempting to rebuild momentum from the ground up.
Mobile users can join quickly, experiment with user-generated content and form communities. If those communities grow, some participants may later choose to try VR hardware for a more immersive experience. In this way, mobile becomes a gateway rather than a replacement.
There is also a financial logic – mobile audiences support advertising, virtual goods and microtransactions at a scale that VR has yet to match.
Expanding the user base increases the chances of a sustainable virtual economy, something essential if Meta hopes to justify the enormous sums invested in Reality Labs.
What It Means For The Future
For Meta, the pivot is both pragmatic and symbolic – recognising that revolutionary technologies rarely succeed on hardware innovation alone.
Horizon Worlds’ move to mobile reflects a belief that the path to the metaverse runs through the devices people already use every day.
Instead of chasing a purely VR future, Meta is embracing a hybrid approach that blends accessibility with immersion.
In doing so, it may be redefining what the metaverse actually looks like – less a headset-only frontier, and more a layered digital world spanning phones, glasses and virtual reality alike.
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