[HN Gopher] Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued
___________________________________________________________________
Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued
Author : par
Score : 134 points
Date : 2026-03-17 19:17 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (communityforums.atmeta.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (communityforums.atmeta.com)
| tyleo wrote:
| Interesting, cutting way back in the product they renamed the
| whole company for.
|
| They feel a bit directionless to me. They are still making money
| but even their AI attempt feels half hearted. I think they are
| really trying but I'm not sure they can build the engineering
| muscle to move in new areas with the brand damage they've
| sustained.
| bhouston wrote:
| > Interesting, cutting way back in the product they renamed the
| whole company for.
|
| It was clearly the wrong bet. He pumped something like $100B
| into the endeavour (Meta Quest / VR / Horizons) and it is just
| slowly dying as we speak. He has to give up on it, although I
| am sure it will be called a "pivot" into AR glasses.
| tyleo wrote:
| Yeah, it was a bizarre decision. There isn't a clear ROI on
| games and that's what Horizon Worlds has been the whole time.
| There's no equation that says a 100M game automatically makes
| 100x more than a 1M game on average. If anything the equation
| is sub-linear. 100B just doesn't seem like the right size for
| a game investment.
| Anon1096 wrote:
| It's supposed to be a Roblox competitor, which does print
| money, though probably not to the extent of how much they
| invested.
|
| The problems are 2 fold:
|
| People/kids don't want to put on a VR headset to play
| Roblox. I guess they're conceding this point by pivoting to
| mobile.
|
| Meta is the opposite of cool. Real name requirements, only
| humanoid avatars, super corpo branding, etc really
| seriously hold them back from competing with VRChat or
| Roblox. This one is terminal it'll never be fixable as long
| as Meta is at the helm.
| tyleo wrote:
| Even Roblox doesn't print money if you look into that
| business. They print engagement but are still fighting
| tooth and nail to make a dime on it.
|
| I can see Meta wanting the engagement though.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| There are some really good ar glasses for a couple of hundred
| dollars, I think they are going to end up really cheap and
| not the 100 billion investment that facebook needs.
| ljf wrote:
| Any you'd recommend or can point me to good reviews for?
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| Tbf I don't think they ever intended to make back their
| investments via the goggles. As near as I can tell the
| thought process was basically: "Real estate + fashion +
| live entertainment + art + etc is X quadrillion dollars. We
| could make The Virtual World and capture all that value. It
| would be irrational _not_ to invest $100B! " Basically
| Pascal's Investment.
| PLenz wrote:
| It's not slowly dying, it was dead on arrival and never had
| any real traction
| KronisLV wrote:
| > He pumped something like $100B into the endeavour (Meta
| Quest / VR / Horizons) and it is just slowly dying as we
| speak.
|
| Literally never met anyone who used or liked the Horizon
| thing, VRChat in comparison is more popular and doesn't feel
| like a soulless corporate husk: they also have quite the
| variety of worlds, from party games, to someone building a
| whole jet/chopper flight combat simcade world; ofc all of
| them are a bit jank, but lots of cool stuff and very
| expressive avatars.
|
| Meta Quest, on the other hand, seems like a really good piece
| of tech - I still have my Quest 2 (because I'm broke as
| hell), but I enjoyed even that one, albeit maybe with a
| slightly more comfy head strap than the default one and the
| Virtual Desktop app cause their Link app doesn't support
| Intel Arc GPUs. The tracking is good, the experience of all
| sorts of stuff in VR is nice, games like H3VR or VTOL VR are
| great, as is Into The Radius VR! At the same time, I can see
| why it never saw super widespread adoption - tricky to
| develop for and also a somewhat limited audience.
|
| Also the productivity situation just isn't there, closest I
| got to a good productivity setup (out of curiosity) was the
| Immersed app before they messed it all up by removing support
| for physical monitors - I could have my 4 physical monitors
| in VR surrounded by whatever I want and some virtual monitors
| and just lock in, it was kind of zen despite the technical
| limitations. It seems like people got promising tech in
| place... and then never really wrote good software to take
| advantage of it. Even Virtual Desktop has artificially
| enforced monitor limits in VR.
|
| I hope VR tech continues to progress (especially lightweight
| headsets) no matter what happens to Meta.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| It makes sense to rebrand anyway, because I'm sure they don't
| want people to only think of "that social media site" for all
| of their other ventures. Just like Google rebranding as
| alphabet
| tyleo wrote:
| IDK, I still call Google "Google". I even hear employees
| refer to the entity as "Google". The Meta rebranding seems
| different.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I think for Google the more meaningful other brands are the
| actual product ones, like Waymo, Nest, YouTube, Calico,
| Verily. Those are the ones that benefit from being able to
| distance themselves a bit from being "a Google company" and
| all the baggage that comes with that, eg an assumption that
| it'll be shuttered at some point, will pivot massively into
| ads, whatever.
|
| I don't think Meta has nearly that need. It's "other
| companies" are Instagram and Whatsapp, which are basically
| in the exact same space as Facebook.
| caconym_ wrote:
| I don't think Google really "rebranded" in the same kind of
| way, since Google is still their brand across the vast
| majority of their product offerings and the signs on Google
| offices still say Google. Seems like the Alphabet thing is
| more about letting the "other bets" be under a higher
| umbrella, and possibly other reasons related to financial
| engineering etc.
| nerevarthelame wrote:
| The rebrand came at a time when "Facebook" was mainly
| associated with either tremendous scandal (Facebook Files, ad
| fraud, Cambridge Analytica, Rohingya and Tigray genocides,
| etc.) or a social media platform increasingly dominated by
| the elderly.
|
| I think it was a desperate lunge away from that toxic brand
| toward ANYTHING else. Zuckerberg put his money on VR, given
| the pandemic and the mild success of Oculus.
|
| Betting big on the metaverse in particular was a mistake, but
| it might have helped keep the Facebook stink off of products
| like WhatsApp and Instagram, which remain pretty popular
| among mainstream audiences.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Can we all say a big thank you to Neal Stephenson for inspiring
| Zuckerberg to light tens of billions of dollars on fire in this
| stupid quest? Imagine what kinds of anticompetitive
| acquisitions or further privacy-invading tech they might've
| spent that on instead.
| bathwaterpizza wrote:
| They had the money to try something, did it, didn't work. Not
| unheard of. Still a >$1T company.
| Traster wrote:
| I was at Intel for a while and there was one glaring problem -
| they have one product that spins off a huge amount of cash.
| This means a few things: First, that one product is really
| where the things that matter happen. But second, they have all
| this money and they don't know what to do with it, they can't
| spend it all on their core product because that looks terrible
| - they're already throwing off money, investing more probably
| just makes your company look bad (you're spending more to get
| the same revenue). SO instead you have to take that money and
| make bets. But not just any bets. You need a bet that (a)
| matters if it pays off, and (b) looks favourable compared to
| the core business. So you buy Mcafee and Altera and MobilEye,
| 5G was the future once...
|
| So to take the Meta example, they need something that is going
| to have revenue upside similar to Meta advertising revenue (one
| of the most profitable things in the universe), and that has
| better margins that the advertising business (basically
| impossible).So the _only_ logical thing to do is to make
| grotesquely large bets on things that are extremely
| speculative. You can 't bet on things that are well known -
| because nothing known has the properties from earlier that
| you're looking for, and you can't bet small because you've got
| to convince people you're the pay off is of a similar size to
| your existing business.
|
| In Intel's case they lost focus on the core business and so
| that died and their other bets didn't matter because the core
| business was dead. With Meta the core business in't dead, but
| it's only a matter of time before it's seriously threatened and
| so they're going to attack that threat with everything they've
| got - and they have a tonne of resources.
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| Sounds a lot like Google as well
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| But Google actually knows how to do research and how to
| apply it to products. Meta's AI research hasn't produced
| anywhere near as many state of the art products
| /revolutionary achievements.
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| I was thinking more of their primary revenue source /
| money printer being their ads business like Meta then
| they also spend billions from it on all kinds of other
| bets.
| seneca wrote:
| > But Google actually knows how to do research and how to
| apply it to products.
|
| I have seen basically no evidence of this. Google knows
| how to do research to create technology. Google is pretty
| terrible at creating product though.
| mosura wrote:
| Which is almost word for word the state Microsoft have
| been in for over 20 years.
|
| To the point it was a running joke at MSR.
| zem wrote:
| google knows how to do research, at any rate.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Man, activist shareholders should really start demanding that
| companies return money to them rather than setting it on fire
| with vanity projects.
| cedws wrote:
| I'd like to think that the top minds working on AI have a
| higher purpose than to get the next generation hooked to a
| digital morphine drip. Serving soap cutting videos and giving
| teen girls body dysmorphia isn't a very compelling mission.
|
| Though I'm sure many are mercenaries and will work for whoever
| pays the most.
| coldpie wrote:
| > I'd like to think that the top minds working on AI have a
| higher purpose than to get the next generation hooked to a
| digital morphine drip
|
| The next 5 years are going to be _very_ disappointing for
| you.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> I'd like to think that the top minds working on AI have a
| higher purpose than to get the next generation hooked to a
| digital morphine drip._
|
| That's the irony. The genius scientists are against AI used
| for defense, but somehow they're all-in for AI being used to
| getting people addicted to ads, dopamine, gambling, debt,
| porn, political manipulation, etc. basically everything
| that's guarantee to wreck society, but thank god they aren't
| making weapons I guess.
| karmakaze wrote:
| The Meta/Oculus bet was never about VR or gaming. It is to
| solve Zuck's greatest fear of being beholden to platforms
| controlled by others. What it was supposed to be was basically
| what Microsoft missed out on with mobile, losing to Google and
| Apple. VR and AR could be that next platform to own and
| control. They would love to have all the data that Google and
| Apple enjoy. That's what Quest -> Horizon was about, change a
| gaming device into a mainstream entertainment and work-friendly
| one. This is all driven out of fear and lack of control. It
| would suck for them if OpenAI owns the most successful personal
| AI device.
| cheriot wrote:
| Condolences to those that about to be laid off
|
| Context: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/14/meta-reportedly-
| considerin...
| xd1936 wrote:
| Unbelievable. They re-architected the whole operating system
| around this stupid app. They discontinued their previous
| homescreen environments in favor of trying to promote Horizon
| Worlds, only to discontinue the blasted thing anyway? After all
| of those millions of dollars spent trying to make virtual events
| happen?
| kemotep wrote:
| Billions. Facebook has spent billions and billions over the
| past decade in VR. Starting with the Oculus merger and then in
| 2021 with the rebrand.
|
| 10 billion a year supposedly for the past 5 years now.
| xd1936 wrote:
| I meant hundreds of millions on Horizon Worlds specifically.
| Virtual concerts and the like. Big "Hello Fellow Kids"
| energy.
| tantalor wrote:
| Can you blame them? They saw the huge success Fortnite was
| having in that space.
|
| Facebook's core competency is copying other successful
| products. Sometimes it works.
| tempest_ wrote:
| should have just bought epic then like they usually do
| tantalor wrote:
| Indeed. Reportedly Epic was worth $31.5 billion in 2022.
| That's only ~1/3 what they spent on Metaverse.
| Raed667 wrote:
| I kept saying to myself, they must be seeing something I'm
| not... I guess not
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things
| got out of hand."
|
| - All The President's Men
| bee_rider wrote:
| VR games are actually kind of neat and fun. But it's too
| much of a hassle to set the thing up every time and, I
| dunno, the association with Facebook is too icky.
|
| It would have been really interesting to see what Oculus
| could have become without getting bought. I do think they
| were a little neat idea, not at all ready for Facebook
| sized projects.
| m4rtink wrote:
| With modern inside out tracking headsets (basically
| camera based SLAM) the setup us none to minimal (clear up
| some space on the ground so you don't trip over things if
| not playing seated).
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Sometimes it's just a jobs program to keep people busy so
| that they can't build something else that can threaten your
| business
| overfeed wrote:
| If this were remotely true, there wouldn't have huge
| layoff rounds. The opposite is true: they hire thousands
| upon thousands of people and teach them how to build
| scalable software, and then set them loose. I'm frankly
| surprised by the lack of competition, but I suppose
| that's gated at multiple levels (visas, personal risk,
| funding, network effects, etc)
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> teach them how to build scalable software_
|
| Don't they screen to hire people who already know that?
| overfeed wrote:
| > Don't they screen to hire people who already know that?
|
| There was a time when big tech widely hired dor entry-
| level jobs.
|
| Also, cramming for the design portion of an interview,
| and doing it for real, and interacting with the
| architects/design documents are 2 very different things
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| It was true. Then they needed money for other things and
| whole orgs get laid off.
| EGreg wrote:
| They could have just waited until AI came out, now they can
| spend $1 million on tokens and slop :)
| reaperducer wrote:
| _10 billion a year supposedly for the past 5 years now._
|
| Imagine being able to solve world hunger, and then... not.
| michelb wrote:
| So, a fraction of the AI investments? It's pretty clear where
| the focus is bow and who/what no longer has a future at Meta.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > So, a fraction of the AI investments? It's pretty clear
| where the focus is bow and who/what no longer has a future
| at Meta.
|
| And the tens of billions spent on AI at Meta... As a
| result, we're all using "Meta Code CLI" and "ChatBook" and
| "Geminizuck" right?
|
| Seriously: while we're all on Claude Code using the
| Anthropic models and many are happy with Gemini and ChatGPT
| for other stuff, where is Meta's AI offering? I love their
| _Segment Anything Models_ (SAM) but what the heck has Meta
| to answer to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI?
| turtlesdown11 wrote:
| > a fraction of the AI investments
|
| you realize 99% of those announced "investments" have yet
| to occur as recognizable transactions, correct?
|
| Meanwhile, the barrel of $70b in metaverse waste was
| actually spent
| alexpotato wrote:
| What's the quote:
|
| "A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you're
| talking about some real money."
| mosura wrote:
| The usage numbers probably reflect what happened in this house:
| since the pestering to confirm age and the horizon worlds
| update the Meta VR devices have literally not been recharged.
|
| They had the foundation of something half reasonable at one
| point, but their product management clearly got in the way.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| _but their product management clearly got in the way_
|
| I'm pretty sure the buck stops with Mark Zuckerberg.
| mosura wrote:
| Zuckerberg wants a cyberpunk future, not some 3D immersive
| HR department on your face.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I think to him those are the same thing.
|
| If he wanted an imaginative environment he'd be in
| VRChat.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| They also renamed the entire corporation from "Facebook" to
| "Meta" to prove how serious they were about it.
| tavavex wrote:
| While simultaneously renaming the VR headsets to also use
| Meta branding instead of Oculus, even though Oculus was a
| great brand and the most recognizable name in the VR
| industry. What made it worse is that by that point they'd
| produced lots of headsets with Oculus branding, including an
| Oculus button on one of the controllers. So, they had to
| change that button to also have a different logo and name,
| and have the software presumably recognize which revision you
| had to draw the correct controller model in the VR view. It's
| insane how far they went in pursuit of what they saw as the
| next NFTs.
| actualwitch wrote:
| IIRC the reason they abandoned Oculus brand was that Palmer
| Luckey sold the company with condition the Oculus headsets
| would not need a facebook account to use it. Later they
| renamed the company and headset, and would you look at that
| -- it requires meta account now.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Now they have to rebrand the company again to be about some
| AI hype spy glasses. The Metaverse was a flop.
| anthonybsd wrote:
| > After all of those millions of dollars spent trying to make
| virtual events happen?
|
| Billions. $70 billion since 2021 to be exact.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| Not millions. Many many billions. (not on virtual events, but
| on the platform itself--that's the crazy part)
| m4rtink wrote:
| And at the same time VRChat is reaching record popularity and
| user counts with tiny fraction of the budget Facebook wasted.
|
| And it is so simple - just listen to your users and give them
| what they want - which seems to be VR cat girls.
| amazingamazing wrote:
| And soon 20% of meta too
| etchalon wrote:
| Zucker just keeps failing up.
| bhouston wrote:
| Okay, how long until Meta Quest is discontinued/sunset?
|
| I believe there is no expectation of a Meta Quest 4 right?
| giobox wrote:
| In all seriousness, given component price increases etc, the
| Quest 3 remains an incredible deal for PC VR use. Aside from
| the foveated rendering, the lens/display specifications are
| very close to Valve's still to ship Steam Frame, which at this
| stage will almost certainly cost more than the Quest 3 does.
|
| 25 PPD VR headset for 499 with inside-out tracking plus
| controllers etc is amazing value. I've never once used any of
| the Meta applications, I only use it for VR games on Steam.
|
| I think there is a case to be made one should buy one while you
| still can, if you want a great value PC VR headset. It's still
| an excellent choice for stuff like sim racing as well.
|
| I also think the Quest line of hardware is done for. They are
| clearly much more interested in the glasses lineup, products
| like the Ray Bans etc, none of which appear to use any of the
| Quest software stack.
| LorenDB wrote:
| Meta has very recently had leaks of an upcoming lightweight
| headset. So maybe not a Quest 4 as a direct successor to the
| Quest 3, but a new headset is in the works.
| riskable wrote:
| Rumor is it that the focus of this new headset is AR. Not VR.
|
| So once again they're making a stupid business decision based
| on wishful thinking.
|
| Exec 1: "Surely, people will want to wear this headset all
| day while they work! Because the only reason why anyone would
| NOT want to do that is the weight of the thing!"
|
| Exec 2: "Exactly! Gaming makes us a lot of money--and it's
| the only reason anyone ever bought our VR headsets--but
| imagine how much _more_ money we could be making from
| business customers /apps that currently have no need for such
| devices. If we build it, they will come though! Can there be
| any doubt?"
|
| Exec 3: "Not to mention that the data we collect from gamers
| has almost no value! We need to be collecting intimate
| details about everyone's lives, not their best Beat Saber
| scores!"
|
| Exec 4: "You know what? Let's get rid of the controllers
| entirely. Sure, they're absolutely 100% necessary for decent
| gaming but I seriously doubt the business applications of AR
| that we're pretending is a $100 billion market won't need
| it."
|
| Exec 5: "I'm concerned that end users will be able to do what
| they want with OUR devices that we're so graciously selling
| them the privilege to use. We need to ensure they're NOT at
| all like generic PCs that allow anyone and everyone to run
| whatever software they want and attach 3rd party hardware.
| It's not like such capabilities of general purpose hardware
| were what set off the PC revolution or anything!"
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Layoffs are probably on the horizon
| hvb2 wrote:
| And those are the non virtual ones, right?
| bhouston wrote:
| Is Meta Horizon Worlds working on PC well? I guess it is their
| attempt to be competitive with Roblox.
| jryio wrote:
| Historians will write about the 'metaverse' as the last software
| frontier humanity embarked on before AI.
|
| What a shame. Hopefully capitalism and AI research does not
| produce equally bad products and ideas.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I do not think historians will write about the metaverse at
| all.
|
| Maybe it'll be a case study in business schools for a while,
| but I think that'll be the extent of its legacy
| nullpoint420 wrote:
| And the blockchain.
| rchaud wrote:
| If they mention it at all, it'll be in the context of the
| C-suite envy about the money being made with Fortnite skins and
| "virtual assets", resulting in galaxy brain ideas like "buy
| land in the metaverse" or "own rare art with NFTs".
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It can always have a second life.
| i1856511 wrote:
| Did they ever get legs?
| rhcom2 wrote:
| The most obvious and expected outcome to everyone except Zuck.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Zuck has become a very rich man avoiding all the obvious and
| expected outcomes. When Facebook stock hit its low a few years
| ago, HN was explaining why it was doomed. The man has founder
| mentality at the helm of a trillion-dollar company. It is no
| wonder he is what he is.
| riskable wrote:
| They just used their war chest to buy a bunch of companies to
| diversify their revenue stream. It's not like Meta made some
| massively profitable innovations or new services.
| paxys wrote:
| The stock lows was a market overreaction, and it corrected
| itself soon after. It's not like Zuck got the company out of
| the hole by making some genius moves. Quite the opposite.
| Meta would be in an equally good or better position today had
| Zuck just done _nothing_ for the last decade.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| The quest is such a beautiful device. I hope they continue to
| work on it and release new versions. VR is so good and still in
| it's infancy.
| Eufrat wrote:
| > VR is so good and still in it's infancy.
|
| I believe 30% of the population cannot use VR in any way shape
| or form because your inner ear has decided the floor is the
| only place you can be.
| andybak wrote:
| Even for games or experiences with no artificial locomotion
| whatsoever?
| Eufrat wrote:
| Yes, my understanding (and I suspect the reason why the
| airflow experiment worked) is that a large part of the
| reason this happens is because of a mismatch between the
| output from the vestibular and visual systems. So, the
| automated defenses of your body freak out and go into a
| defensive mode.
|
| I think that ~30% of the population just has more
| sensitivity to the mismatch.
| riskable wrote:
| FYI: This is usually solved by placing a fan on the floor in
| front of your boundary (designated play area). This isn't
| just a "community tip", it's been studied:
|
| https://www.computer.org/csdl/journal/tg/2025/05/10916971/24.
| ..
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| It's interesting, but this is the kind of barrier that
| makes Zuck's idea of everyone using VR all the time
| everywhere impossible. Putting a fan in the space is the
| kind of hack only someone highly motivated to play VR games
| would do, not someone who wants to do online shopping.
| robot_jesus wrote:
| I have to agree. Is it perfect? Hell no. Is it an insane value
| for the $250 I paid for my Quest 3s last year at Target? Hell
| yes.
|
| My kids and I use our two headsets a lot. Sure, it's not a
| daily driver for workflows, but the uniqueness of many of the
| game experiences just can't be replicated on desktops/consoles.
|
| It's a damn shame because Facebook bought up Oculus, poured
| gasoline on a fire by pumping $100B dollars in and now seems
| set to walk away because it didn't make a $100B + 1 dollars.
|
| In its current state, it was never going to be a replacement
| for PCs or phone experiences. It's just a different lane all
| together. But Beat Saber, or Walkabout mini golf, or the I
| Expect You to Die series are insanely fun and unique. I'll be
| sad if they fold the quest down entirely, but I hope that Valve
| or others take up the banner. VR doesn't have to be a $100B
| industry to be viable, especially in its infancy.
|
| Meanwhile, Apple tosses a $3,500 headset onto the market and
| then is surprised that it's treated as a novelty. Why is it so
| hard for these companies to get their strategies right? Maybe
| it's because it's not a product suited (today, at least) for
| two of the largest companies on earth to focus on. These are
| moonshot companies who make products that half of the globe
| uses on a daily basis.
|
| I just want a solid VR platform with a healthy pipeline or
| quirky, interesting games.
| abraxas wrote:
| I also worry that the whole idea will die before it had a
| chance to truly blossom. It's really amazing as is and with
| higher resolution and better field of view it could be on
| another level altogether. I hope that Valve will keep the
| tocrch and I plan to get their VR glasses to support the
| industry.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| When will horizon worlds be axed entirely? It has something like
| fewer than 10,000 active users at any given time.
| robot_jesus wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > By March 31, 2026, Horizon Worlds and Events will no longer
| appear in the Store on Quest. Also, Horizon Central, Events
| Arena, Kaiju, and Bobber Bay worlds will no longer be available
| in VR. You can still jump into your other favorite worlds in VR
| until June 15, 2026, after which the Horizon Worlds app will be
| removed from Quest, and Worlds will no longer be available in
| VR.
| LorenDB wrote:
| But Horizon Worlds will continue to be available on mobile,
| so it's just the Quest ecosystem losing access in favor of a
| phone-first platform.
| gcr wrote:
| A phone-first VR platform?
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| Phone-only
|
| The writing has been on the wall for a long time. Very
| few people want to buy a separate cumbersome face hugger
| device.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| I don't think that's entirely it, they don't want the
| product facebook is selling. VR Chat is massively more
| popular than Facebooks offerings.
|
| Though Facebook had impossible goals, they didn't want to
| make a gaming device, they wanted to make the next
| smartphone, that everyday people and office workers would
| use. Which was just unrealistic.
| cubefox wrote:
| In Snow Crash, the Metaverse was using VR. But it could
| also have worked via a smartphone. They are independent.
| malfist wrote:
| Dang, that's fast. 13 days to market place removal, 90 days
| until complete shutdown.
| daverol wrote:
| Where will all those Meta Avatars go? Is there a retirement home
| in the Metaverse?
| OrangeMusic wrote:
| The app will still exist, but only on mobile (which is
| absolutely inexplicable).
| t-writescode wrote:
| They were trying to compete with an existing, VERY good couple of
| alternatives, and the people most actually likely to use that
| product were already on those services.
|
| It was a losing play that didn't know what market it was actually
| entering.
| cammikebrown wrote:
| What are some alternatives?
| t-writescode wrote:
| VRChat is the most popular one. Age verification. User
| generated models. User generated worlds. Revenue sharing in
| worlds. For-sale models and props. It's quite feature rich
| now.
|
| Edit: fixed typo
| squidsoup wrote:
| Don't forget the deranged furries.
| t-writescode wrote:
| The suspiciously wealthy software developers, astronauts,
| pharmacists, game devs and artists that build high
| quality 3d models, Blender and Substance Painter
| tutorials and add-ons that prop up a good percentage of
| the VR headset market, Patreon market, and have a
| thriving artisan ecosystem?
| riskable wrote:
| They're not _all_ deranged! Some are completely
| productive, functional furries. Probably. Maybe.
|
| Also, your statement is _far_ too reductive! There 's
| plenty of avatars with scales! Also, don't forget the
| anime girls that are actually middle-aged men and the
| occasional sentient burrito.
| t-writescode wrote:
| I prefer the remarkably -deep-voiced, tiny birds; the
| literal smoke alarms, and those who like to Pump Up the
| Jam, myself!
| senderista wrote:
| Imagine what $100B could have done for medical or energy
| research.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Almost nothing. That is a few weeks of global medical R&D
| spend, spread over more than a decade.
| paxys wrote:
| Annual R&D spending of pharmaceutical companies:
|
| Merck - $17.9B
|
| Johnson & Johnson - $17.2B
|
| Roche - $14.6B
|
| AstraZeneca - $13.6B
|
| AbbVie - $12.8B
|
| Bristol Myers Squibb - $11.2B
|
| Eli Lilly - $10.99B
|
| Meta's _losses_ on Metaverse last year - $19.2B
|
| So, simply redirecting their spending in that division would
| instantly propel Meta to be the biggest medical researcher in
| the world. And as a bonus they'd get a real return out of it.
| slaw wrote:
| 40 nuclear power plants.
| robot_jesus wrote:
| As a thought experiment, they probably helped the world global
| happiness more by burning $100B rather than just sitting on a
| massive cash hoard as so many tech companies enjoy doing.
| Sitting in their coffers it was doing nothing. At least this
| way, it went to a whole bunch of individuals, manufacturing
| startups, etc. And theoretically many of those recipients spent
| some of it.
|
| I'm not saying it wasn't wasted spend, but velocity of money is
| a thing and maybe it's better off in the hands of the people
| who it was spent on instead of sitting in Zuck's war chest.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money
| paxys wrote:
| I wouldn't call what Meta is providing to the world
| "happiness". Addiction is a lot more apt.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Pakistan spent under $20bn to convert to about 25% solar.
| $100bn would probably have been enough for the whole country of
| 250 million people.
| yhvr wrote:
| It's baffling to me how much they juiced up this platform on
| Horizon OS, and now they're just axing it from there entirely.
| Millions if not billions of dollars gone to waste. At least I
| won't have to see it in the UI anymore, I guess. How does this
| even happen?
| d--b wrote:
| That sucks.
|
| At least they had a purpose, a vision.
|
| Now Zuckerberg is going to be all sour about it and even more
| cynical about everything.
|
| They're going to go back to what they know how to do: optimize
| for attention and sell personal data.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Second Life, which contains only niche perverts, has more
| concurrent actives than Horizon Worlds.
| cubefox wrote:
| VRChat also seems to be used only by niche perverts. Perhaps
| only niche perverts are currently interested in the Metaverse,
| and Horizon Worlds failed because it didn't cater to niche
| perverts.
| jrflowers wrote:
| I guess that idea just didn't have legs.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| That's okay - it felt cartoony and, I imagine it wasn't the
| reason why the vast majority of people bought the Quest anyway.
| ralusek wrote:
| Maybe I'm just naive but I don't really understand discontinuing
| things like this. Like, unless there are like 100 people using
| this, how can it not be possible to just leave this running at
| like 0.5% of its former capacity. Just leave up like 1 server,
| collapse all of the DBs into one, and let these few autists have
| their stuff.
| michelb wrote:
| It probably distracts from the AI race. With the newly bought
| political power it makes far more sense for Meta to align with
| whatever this administration seeks. And it's not gaming or VR.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| There might be expensive non-technical maintenance required,
| such as checks for illegal user content.
| sxp wrote:
| At a minimum, the app needs updates to handle breakages caused
| by OS updates. It needs moderators and other staff for legal
| reasons since Meta is large enough that there's always a
| significant liability risk for even a few users. It needs to
| interact with the main non-VR app unless they want to fully
| isolate it. Etc.
|
| When I was at Google, I had many of these discussions about
| cost tradeoffs for products that were
| https://killedbygoogle.com/
| dmorrison1 wrote:
| It was terrible, and frankly the only way I see it getting to
| where it got is by upper management keeping their fingers in
| their ears and their eyes shut.
| seydor wrote:
| Facebook's strong suit has always been gossip. Why are they even
| spending for anything else
| browsingonly wrote:
| That was the point of Horizon Worlds. They were trying a (very
| expensive) social play for VR.
|
| The problem is that the intersection/suitability of VR and
| social media is rather low, while as a counterexample the
| intersection of mobile and social media is very large. I have
| no desire to chat with old classmates when I "suit up" with VR
| goggles, I'm there to game.
| jesse_dot_id wrote:
| I never understood why they were trying to recreate real life
| social interactions in VR, because it's worse by default, and the
| majority of the nerds who buy this tech are probably trying to
| escape that on some level. I know that any time I went into Meta
| Horizon Worlds, I didn't want to hear 95% of the people I heard
| talking.
|
| What I do use VR for is Bigscreen VR nearly every night to watch
| stuff with my friends. Scrolling through reels in a movie theater
| is pretty fun and even though I never do it solo on my phone, I
| will sit there for like 3-4 hours in VR enjoying communal brain
| rot.
|
| Perhaps they should focus on things like that instead of gimmicks
| that nobody cares about. For example, I have never once played a
| game in VR that didn't force me to sit or stand in a specific
| position, meaning to play it, I have to go out of my way to do
| so.
| Raed667 wrote:
| They just wanted a platform they control instead of apple or
| Google
| zamadatix wrote:
| The last 10 years of the VR industry has been about trying to
| find users beyond the hardcore nerds who want to virtually meet
| up with friends every night or try out experiences/demos for
| more than a few days. The moment that hope goes away so do the
| tens of billions of investment as it was never really about
| finding out what that group of users wanted.
| paxys wrote:
| It's wild how much mismanagement Zuck is able to get away with
| just because he controls majority voting shares in Meta. At this
| point all of the missteps by the company in AR/VR, AI and
| everything else can directly be traced back to him. Half-baked
| vision, massive spending and no accountability. The company
| desperately needs a Sundar/Satya type leader.
| Traster wrote:
| At the end of the day the core business is throwing off tonnes
| of money and is run fine. Would it be better not to throw
| billions at the next cool thing? Who knows. Probably. But
| Google does the same thing and they've actually built some cool
| stuff.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Return it to the shareholders!
| p_j_w wrote:
| >The company desperately needs a Sundar/Satya type leader.
|
| For the sake of the world's sanity, I'd rather see them go
| belly up.
| atrus wrote:
| Despite the shock at the amount of money meta spent on their
| version of the metaverse, I don't think they spent _nearly_
| enough to accomplish their vision.
|
| Meta, to the detriment of the market, tried too early in the VR
| lifecycle to own the market. They basically tried to become the
| iPhone and Apple in the year 1990.
|
| Tell me, do you believe any singular company in the year 1990,
| with 100B to burn, would be able to create the iPhone, in any of
| its varations? Absolutely not, there too much research, too much
| to invent, too much to program and not nearly enough talent and
| money for one company to manage.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Is this a prelude to a huge downsizing in reality labs? I wonder
| what percentage of RL is working on this app.
| tren_hard wrote:
| Right as AI world models like Genie 3 are taking off too. Seems
| like a great fit for VR.
| neosat wrote:
| The sign of a company in absolute decline is when the worst
| possible place to get info about it, is their official
| announcement. Whoever wrote the announcement went out of their
| way to obfuscate the crux of the announcement (compare the clear
| heading on hackernews to their own heading)
|
| If your (well paid) job is to write and communicate clearly, and
| for a major announcement you come up with this...not much left to
| say.
| XCSme wrote:
| I have a Quest 2, I only use it to play Eleven Table Tennis VR.
|
| I don't understand what Horizon Worlds is or the other thing
| mentioned.
| XCSme wrote:
| It will be Gemini World instead ...
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