Meta’s flagship metaverse for consumers Horizon Worlds is falling short of goals, failing to meet internal performance expectations as user interest in the virtual world hits record low.
Horizon Worlds, a free virtual reality, an online video game with an integrated game creation system developed and published by Meta Platforms for Oculus Rift S and Oculus Quest 2, is failing to meet internal performance expectations, according to internal memo reviewed by NFTs Unboxed.
Meta initially aimed to reach 500,000 monthly active users in Horizon Worlds by the end of the year, but the current figure is less than 200,000. In addition, the documents showed that most users did not return to Horizon after the first month on the platform, and the number of users has been steadily declining since the spring, the Journal said.
Even the company’s showcase worlds, such as Questy’s, a virtual arcade featured in a Super Bowl commercial earlier this year, have been recently barren of users.
Only 9% of the world is visited by at least 50 people, and most are never visited.
The report comes as the company’s shares fall, user numbers decline, and advertisers cut costs. Meta’s shares are down 62% so far this year.
Meta renamed Facebook last year to reflect the company’s ambitions beyond social media. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been specifically interested in building the metaverse, which is a virtual world that allows users to work and play together.
As a result, Meta created Horizon Worlds, which is a network of virtual spaces where users can interact with each other as avatars. People can access Horizon through Meta’s Quest virtual reality headsets.
In an effort to generate some hype around the metaverse, Zuckerberg unveiled his company’s newest virtual reality headset, dubbed the Meta Quest Pro, at the Meta’s Connect conference on Tuesday. The device costs $1,500 and contains new technologies, such as an advanced mobile Snapdragon computer chip.
A Meta spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that the company continues to make improvements to the metaverse, which was always intended to be a multi-year project. Representatives for Meta did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Meta has said it will release a web version of Horizon for mobile devices and computers this year, but the spokesperson had no release dates to reveal.
Meta Unveils New VR Headset
Last week, Meta unveiled a high-end virtual reality headset that comes with a hefty $1,500 price tag. Meta hopes the new Meta Quest Pro headset will lure people to work and play in the still-elusive place called the “metaverse.”
Meta is in the midst of a corporate transformation that it says will take years to complete. The company is trying to evolve from a provider of social media platforms to a dominant power in a nascent virtual reality construct called the metaverse, something like the internet brought to life or at least rendered in 3D.
Meta is positioning the new Meta Quest Pro headset as an alternative to using a laptop,” Rolf Illenberger, founder and managing director of VRdirect, which creates virtual reality environments for businesses, told. But he added that for businesses, operating in the virtual worlds of the metaverse is still “quite a stretch”.
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