Meta decides not to close Horizon Worlds on VR after all

According to Instagram share From Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth, Meta won’t be turning off VR support for Horizon Worlds after all, which should come as a huge relief to about five people.

“We decided, just today actually, that we will continue to do Horizon Worlds in VR,” Bosworth said as part of a Q&A on Instagram Stories after a fan of the app reached out to say they were “sad” about the decision.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed Bosworth’s comments to TechCrunch.

Meta indicated earlier this year that he would do so Stop supporting the Metaverse Social App On the Quest VR headset, which was a huge concession to an app that Meta once envisioned as pivotal to socializing in VR. As it turned out, very few people wanted to spend time in VR. On Tuesday, Meta confirmed its location Community forums Horizon Worlds would move to web and mobile only on June 15, but that announcement was quickly retracted.

Even if Horizon Worlds now remains available via Quest, the fact that the Meta planned to shut it down is proof enough that the Metaverse – or at least as it was imagined in VR – turned out to be just a black hole where Reality Labs’ funding ran out. He lost this section in the meta 73 billion dollars Since 2021, the year in which Meta was rebranded from Facebook. As we are He pointed out Previously, you would have to spend $1 million a day for 200 years to spend that kind of money. (Reality Labs also accounts for spending on augmented reality products like smart glasses, as well as some AI research.)

According to IDC, a technology market intelligence firm, sales of the Meta’s Quest headphones are down 16% on an annual basis from 2024 to 2025, making it unlikely that these devices will meaningfully compete with a smartphone. It’s not just Meta that has struggled to make VR compelling, Apple has had to do so Reducing production From the $3,500 Vision Pro headset due to low demand.

Meta responded to the decline by making significant cuts to its Reality Labs division in January. Affecting more than 1,500 employees Many game studios are closed. Rumors say so Mita is studying Another more significant round of layoffs, which could affect 20% of the company.

Although the Meta will continue to support Horizon Worlds for the Quest headset, the company still plans to prioritize the mobile experience. Bosworth he said on the podcast With journalist Alex Heath that Horizon shifted its focus to mobile since it was a better fit for the product market there.

“There is a much larger audience in the mobile space, and this app is seeing really positive growth on mobile,” Bosworth said of the app. “(The team) has to build everything twice — they build it once for mobile, and they build it again for VR. There’s a very easy way to increase their speed, and it’s just like letting them build for mobile.”

Mobile Intelligence Company Application forms He told TechCrunch that the Horizon Worlds mobile app has seen a total of 45 million downloads worldwide across iOS and Google Play, with 1.5 million downloads so far in 2026. That’s a 53% year-over-year increase compared to last year, when the Horizon Worlds app had about 983,000 downloads at this point.

However, Appfigures estimates that consumers only spent $1.1 million of total consumer spending on the app, which is a small amount compared to the amount of Meta’s investment in the metaverse.

Bosworth is right that there’s more opportunity for Horizon Worlds on mobile than on Quest headsets – but Meta will need to see more consumer spending on the app to prove a worthwhile investment.