Credit: Meta
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth commented on the recent changes within the Reality Labs division. The company misdirected its efforts in building the metaverse, which ultimately negatively impacted the performance of Quest headsets.
Meta has decided to change its approach, focusing on artificial intelligence and smart glasses; virtual reality and metaverse projects will be cut, a top manager announced. Bosworth, who also heads the Reality Labs department, identified three main problems the company faces in this area: insufficient development of the metaverse concept, high development costs, and over-integration of the Horizon Worlds platform with Meta’s overall VR strategy.
Horizon Worlds is not the company’s first social virtual reality platform. Meta aimed to create a “richer version” of the mental “transportation” people currently experience when communicating via smartphones. In 2023, the company released Horizon Worlds for Android and iOS smartphones, but this, Mr. Bosworth noted, complicated the development process and increased costs. Meta also made a mistake by tightly tying Horizon Worlds to the Quest software platform, when in reality, people wear headsets to use them for a variety of purposes. The company is now intensively working on two important areas: supporting third-party VR content and bringing Horizon Worlds to mobile devices.
