Meta is reconsidering its plans to discontinue the VR metaverse of its 3D social platform Horizon Worlds on June 15, to shift its focus on the mobile platform of the app.
Taking to Instagram on Wednesday, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth stated the company has decided that existing virtual reality (VR) worlds remain accessible and that the Horizon Worlds VR app will be available for all users to install “for the foreseeable future.”
In his statement, Bosworth said, Meta is keeping VR Horizon Worlds experiences around as a way to support “the fans who reached out, like yourself, who really care about that.”
The company is only focusing on Horizon Worlds on mobile, saying, “The reason for that is because that’s where most of the consumer and creator energy already was, and so we’re kind of leaning into that.”
Meta’s bets on VR software didn’t turn out to be a great approach; Meta recently laid off nearly 10% of its Reality Labs division, closed three VR studios, halted new content for VR fitness app Supernatural, and halted its metaverse for work.
However, Bosworth stated that Meta has talked nearly the metaverse more broadly as “not just VR and virtual worlds and immersive spaces, but also augmented reality and how you can have digital artifacts overlaid on physical things, And I’ve always said to people from day one that the metaverse is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”
