Meta’s highest-profile bet right now is Horizon Worlds, a social VR platform for the Quest headset. It was recently in Meta’s Super Bowl ad, and on the company’s most recent earnings call. Zuckerberg described it as “essential to our metaverse goal.”
Chris Cox, the company’s chief product officer, gave staff an update on Horizon’s user growth during a virtual Meta all-hands meeting earlier this week.
According to an employee who overheard the statement, since Horizon Worlds was given out to all Quest users in the US and Canada in early December, its monthly user base has expanded by a factor of ten to 300,000 people.
Before Horizon Worlds was in a private beta for creators to test its world-building tools
Horizon Worlds was in a private beta for creators to test its world-building tools before its December launch. The platform allows legless avatars to create their own personalized environments in which to hang out and play games.
Horizon Worlds has surpassed 10,000 unique worlds constructed to date. According to Meta, and its private Facebook community for creators now has over 20,000 members.
Horizon’s success is difficult to measure in relation to the underlying hardware platform because Meta hasn’t revealed how many Quest headsets it has sold to date. However, numerous third-party estimates put the Quest’s sales at around 10 million. Meta will release a version of Horizon for mobile phones later this year. According to Zuckerberg, in order to “deliver early metaverse experiences to more surfaces outside VR.”
“While the deepest and most immersive experiences will be in virtual reality, you’ll also be able to access the worlds via your Facebook or Instagram apps. And perhaps more in the future,” the CEO said during Meta’s most recent earnings call.
Horizon Worlds doesn’t make money for Meta yet, the pressure is on for it to be successful
Meta must make Horizon reliable enough for millions to utilize. In addition to resolving issues with content moderation and underage users in VR. Many people were unable to attend a recent Foo Fighters concert conducted in Venues following the Super Bowl, and Horizon has yet to create revenue-generating opportunities for producers. Horizon, on the other hand, has a chance to be large if its early user growth is any indication.
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