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?
They also renamed the entire corporation from "Facebook" to "Meta" to prove how serious they were about it.
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.
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.<p>They had the foundation of something half reasonable at one point, but their product management clearly got in the way.
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.<p>10 billion a year supposedly for the past 5 years now.
I kept saying to myself, they must be seeing something I'm not... I guess not
"The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."<p>- All The President's Men
Sometimes it’s just a jobs program to keep people busy so that they can’t build something else that can threaten your business
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.<p>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.
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.
> a fraction of the AI investments<p>you realize 99% of those announced "investments" have yet to occur as recognizable transactions, correct?<p>Meanwhile, the barrel of $70b in metaverse waste was actually spent
> 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.<p>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?<p>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 <i>Segment Anything Models</i> (SAM) but what the heck has Meta to answer to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI?
I meant hundreds of millions on Horizon Worlds specifically. Virtual concerts and the like. Big "Hello Fellow Kids" energy.
<i>10 billion a year supposedly for the past 5 years now.</i><p>Imagine being able to solve world hunger, and then… not.
They could have just waited until AI came out, now they can spend $1 million on tokens and slop :)
> After all of those millions of dollars spent trying to make virtual events happen?<p>Billions. $70 billion since 2021 to be exact.
Not millions. Many many billions. (not on virtual events, but on the platform itself--that's the crazy part)
Interesting, cutting way back in the product they renamed the whole company for.<p>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.
> Interesting, cutting way back in the product they renamed the whole company for.<p>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.
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.
It's supposed to be a Roblox competitor, which does print money, though probably not to the extent of how much they invested.<p>The problems are 2 fold:<p>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.<p>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.
It's not slowly dying, it was dead on arrival and never had any real traction
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.
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...<p>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 <i>only</i> 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.<p>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.
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.<p>Though I'm sure many are mercenaries and will work for whoever pays the most.
They had the money to try something, did it, didn't work. Not unheard of. Still a >$1T company.
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.
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
IDK, I still call Google "Google". I even hear employees refer to the entity as "Google". The Meta rebranding seems different.
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.<p>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.
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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
Condolences to those that about to be laid off<p>Context: <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/14/meta-reportedly-considering-layoffs-that-could-affect-20-of-the-company/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/14/meta-reportedly-considerin...</a>
Layoffs are probably on the horizon
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?
Despite the shock at the amount of money meta spent on their version of the metaverse, I don't think they spent <i>nearly</i> enough to accomplish their vision.<p>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.<p>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.
Right as AI world models like Genie 3 are taking off too. Seems like a great fit for VR.
Where will all those Meta Avatars go? Is there a retirement home in the Metaverse?
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.
That's okay - it felt cartoony and, I imagine it wasn't the reason why the vast majority of people bought the Quest anyway.
Okay, how long until Meta Quest is discontinued/sunset?<p>I believe there is no expectation of a Meta Quest 4 right?
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
Rumor is it that the focus of this new headset is AR. Not VR.<p>So once again they're making a stupid business decision based on wishful thinking.<p>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!"<p>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 <i>more</i> 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?"<p>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!"<p>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."<p>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!"
The most obvious and expected outcome to everyone except Zuck.
Did they ever get legs?
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.<p>It was a losing play that didn’t know what market it was actually entering.
Is this a prelude to a huge downsizing in reality labs? I wonder what percentage of RL is working on this app.
Can someone give a summary for those of us who don't use these products?<p>Is this something huge like a change of strategy / greatly downplaying the metaverse, or just a minor rearranging of chairs on the Titanic?
When will horizon worlds be axed entirely? It has something like fewer than 10,000 active users at any given time.
From the article:<p>> 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.
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.
Dang, that's fast. 13 days to market place removal, 90 days until complete shutdown.
Facebook's strong suit has always been gossip. Why are they even spending for anything else
That was the point of Horizon Worlds. They were trying a (very expensive) social play for VR.<p>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.
Is Meta Horizon Worlds working on PC well? I guess it is their attempt to be competitive with Roblox.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
They just wanted a platform they control instead of apple or Google
I guess that idea just didn’t have legs.
Second Life, which contains only niche perverts, has more concurrent actives than Horizon Worlds.
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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I just want a solid VR platform with a healthy pipeline or quirky, interesting games.
> VR is so good and still in it's infancy.<p>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.
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:<p><a href="https://www.computer.org/csdl/journal/tg/2025/05/10916971/24TAt0i9sek" rel="nofollow">https://www.computer.org/csdl/journal/tg/2025/05/10916971/24...</a>
Even for games or experiences with no artificial locomotion whatsoever?
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.<p>I think that ~30% of the population just has more sensitivity to the mismatch.
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.
That sucks.<p>At least they had a purpose, a vision.<p>Now Zuckerberg is going to be all sour about it and even more cynical about everything.<p>They’re going to go back to what they know how to do: optimize for attention and sell personal data.
Historians will write about the 'metaverse' as the last software frontier humanity embarked on before AI.<p>What a shame. Hopefully capitalism and AI research does not produce equally bad products and ideas.
I do not think historians will write about the metaverse at all.<p>Maybe it'll be a case study in business schools for a while, but I think that'll be the extent of its legacy
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".
It can always have a second life.
And the blockchain.
And soon 20% of meta too
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.
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.
There might be expensive non-technical maintenance required, such as checks for illegal user content.
Imagine what $100B could have done for medical or energy research.
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.<p>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.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money</a>
40 nuclear power plants.
Almost nothing. That is a few weeks of global medical R&D spend, spread over more than a decade.
Annual R&D spending of pharmaceutical companies:<p>Merck - $17.9B<p>Johnson & Johnson - $17.2B<p>Roche - $14.6B<p>AstraZeneca - $13.6B<p>AbbVie - $12.8B<p>Bristol Myers Squibb - $11.2B<p>Eli Lilly - $10.99B<p>Meta’s <i>losses</i> on Metaverse last year - $19.2B<p>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.
Zucker just keeps failing up.
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.
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