Meta has just announced a radical strategic change in its vision of the metaverse. The company is separating Horizon Worlds from the Quest VR platform and focusing its development almost exclusively on mobile devices.
The objective is clear: reach a much wider audience, considering that virtual reality headsets are still not taking off in the market.
Until a few years ago, Meta’s strategy was obvious: virtual reality headsets would be the gateway to online social interaction. Horizon Worlds was conceived as the space where users could communicate and share experiences in a virtual environment. However, the reality of the market has forced the company to rethink its priorities.
According to an entry published on the official Meta page by Samantha RyanVice President of Content at Reality Labs, mobile metaverse strategy has become the top priorityand Horizon Worlds adapts to this new direction.
As part of this change, Horizon Worlds and Quest VR will become independent products. On the Quest platform, Meta will strengthen the participation of external developers and reduce the production of internal content.
On the other hand, mobile-focused Horizon Worlds experiences have seen spectacular growth as more than 2,000 mobile worlds were created by 2025, and monthly active users have quadrupled. The company seeks to capture the same audience that enjoys popular mobile titles, avoiding dependence on virtual reality becoming (or not) a mass technology one day.
Today, virtual reality remains a niche segment Since headsets are expensive, they require space and not all users are willing to spend hours connected. Therefore, the mobile approach offers clear advantages, taking advantage of the fact that phones accompany users every day. Move the metaverse to this platform means making it accessible to millions of people without the need for additional hardware.
With this shift towards mobile, Meta seeks to ensure that the metaverse stops being an experiment limited to virtual reality and becomes an everyday experience, within the reach of any mobile user.