Horizon Worlds, Meta’s virtual reality (VR) social realm, is apparently failing to acquire and retain customers. Horizon Worlds presently has roughly 200,000 monthly active users, according to internal papers acquired by the Wall Street Journal, a drop from the 300,000-user milestone Meta disclosed in February.
Users may construct (or visit) locations in Horizon Worlds where they can hang out, play games, meet new people, and talk with friends. The platform’s userbase surged tenfold once it was opened to all Quest users in the US and Canada in December, which was likely aided by the success of Meta’s Quest 2 headset during last year’s holiday shopping season.
But it seems like Meta is readjusting its expectations. According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta intends to achieve 280,000 monthly active Horizon Worlds users by the end of this year, rather than its earlier target of 500,000. While the firm claimed to have about 10,000 distinct worlds as of February, the WSJ notes that only around 9% of these virtual venues are frequented by more than 50 individuals and that most users leave the platform within one month.
A Meta spokesman told the WSJ that the company’s metaverse ambitions are a multiyear project that is constantly being improved. The Verge’s request for comment was met with silence from Meta.
According to rumours earlier this month, the Horizon Worlds team is dealing with a variety of quality concerns impacting the platform. Vishal Shah, Meta’s VP of Metaverse, said in one message that the team is going on a “quality lockdown” until the end of 2022 to halt the distribution of new features and solve the platform’s bugs.
On Tuesday, during the company’s Connect event, Meta unveiled the $1,499 Quest Pro VR headset, aimed for businesses looking to cooperate in VR. During the presentation, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also revealed that legs would be added to avatars in Horizon Worlds and demonstrated what this may look like. It’s unclear if they’ll appear like that when they arrive in Horizon Worlds, since a Meta representative told UploadVR editor Ian Hamilton that this is only a “preview of what’s to come,” and that the presentation didn’t even take place in live VR.
