Meta's Horizon Worlds VR platform is reportedly struggling to keep users - The Verge

Horizon Worlds, Meta’s societal beingness acceptable successful virtual world (VR), is reportedly struggling to summation and support users. According to interior documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Horizon Worlds presently has astir 200,000 monthly progressive users, a dip from the 300,000-user milestone Meta confirmed it deed backmost successful February.

Horizon Worlds lets users make (or visit) spaces wherever they tin bent out, play games, conscionable different people, and chat with friends. The platform’s userbase really accrued tenfold following its enlargement to each Quest users successful the US and Canada past December, thing the popularity of Meta’s Quest 2 headset during last year’s holiday buying season apt contributed to arsenic well.

But present it looks similar Meta’s adjusting its expectations. According to the WSJ, Meta’s aiming to scope 280,000 monthly progressive Horizon Worlds users by the extremity of this twelvemonth alternatively of its archetypal extremity of 500,000. And portion the institution said it had astir 10,000 abstracted worlds arsenic of February, the WSJ reports that lone astir 9 percent of these virtual venues are visited by much than 50 users, and that astir users don’t instrumentality aft 1 period of utilizing the platform.

In a connection to the WSJ, a Meta spokesperson said the company’s metaverse plans are a multiyear effort, and that it’s continually making improvements. Meta didn’t instantly respond to The Verge’s petition for comment.

Earlier this month, The Verge’s Alex Heath reported that the squad down Horizon Worlds is contending with a fig of prime issues affecting the platform. In 1 memo, Meta’s VP of metaverse, Vishal Shah said the squad is going connected a “quality lockdown” until the extremity of 2022 to intermission the rollout of caller features and code the platform’s bugginess.

“Feedback from our creators, users, playtesters, and galore of america connected the squad is that the aggregate value of papercuts, stableness issues, and bugs is making it excessively hard for our assemblage to acquisition the magic of Horizon,” Shah wrote to employees, portion besides questioning wherefore staffers aren’t utilizing the level each that overmuch themselves. Meta aboriginal rolled retired a new instrumentality that’s expected to marque it easier to study bugs from its Horizon Worlds app, and even admitted successful a blog post that the level was “unstable” during a contention it precocious held successful the app.

At the company’s Connect lawsuit connected Tuesday, Meta revealed the $1,499 Quest Pro VR headset marketed towards companies that privation to collaborate successful VR. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg besides announced that legs are coming to avatars successful Horizon Worlds, and showed disconnected what this mightiness look similar during the presentation. It remains unclear whether they’ll really look similar that erstwhile they get successful Horizon Worlds, arsenic a Meta spokesperson told UploadVR exertion Ian Hamilton that this is lone a “preview of what’s to come,” and that the objection didn’t adjacent instrumentality spot successful unrecorded VR.