- Meta’s new shooter game is the most fun I’ve ever had in the metaverse The Verge
- We’re partnering with Meta Quest VR to bring UFC Fight Pass events to XTADIUM & Meta Horizon Worlds! UFC – Ultimate Fighting Championship
- UFC President Dana White Joins Mark Zuckerberg’s $500B Venture To Provide “Immersive” Experience for MMA Fans EssentiallySports
- Meta is launching a UFC-themed VR experience in Horizon Worlds Engadget
- Meta and the UFC are teaming up on a UFC-themed experience in Horizon Worlds The Verge
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: Metaverse
Metaverse off to ominous start after VR headset sales shrank in 2022
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrates an Oculus Rift virtual reality (VR) headset and Oculus Touch controllers during the Oculus Connect 3 event in San Jose, California, U.S., on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Over a year after changing his company’s name to Meta and committing to spend billions of dollars developing the metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg’s bet on virtual reality is no closer to paying off.
Sales of VR headsets in the U.S. this year declined 2% from a year earlier to $1.1 billion as of early December, according to data shared with CNBC by research firm NPD Group. Facebook’s advertising business generates that much revenue about every three days.
With the ad business mired in a slump, Zuckerberg has been looking to VR devices and related technology to pull Meta into the future. But data from analyst firm CCS Insight reveals that worldwide shipments of VR headsets as well as augmented reality devices dropped more than 12% year over year to 9.6 million in 2022.
Taken together, the estimates of VR headset sales and shipments create a problematic picture for Meta, whose stock price has lost about two-thirds of its value this year. Zuckerberg has said he’s playing the long game with the metaverse, expecting it take up to a decade to go mainstream and projecting it will eventually host hundreds of billions of dollars in commerce.
It’s not just Meta. Numerous venture firms and other tech companies have wagered big over the past decade on a futuristic world of virtual work, education, fitness and sports.
Meta’s Quest 2 headset, released in 2020, is by far the leader in the VR market, according to several analysts. Competing devices from companies like Valve, HP and Sony represent a small fraction of the market.
Sales of Meta’s flagship Quest device dropped in 2022, a decline that can be attributed to the device’s big year in 2021, said Ben Arnold, NPD’s consumer electronics analyst.
“VR had an amazing holiday in 2021,” Arnold said, referring to various promotions that helped boost sales of the devices at a time when gaming consoles like Sony’s PlayStation 5 were in short supply. “It was a great time last year to get one of these products, and VR totally crushed it.”
VR headset revenue in the U.S. doubled in 2021 from about $530 million in 2020, according to NPD.
A confluence of factors contributed to lower sales and shipments in 2022.
The Quest 2 has been around for a few years and, like any consumer electronics device, has lost some appeal as it’s aged. And while Meta released a new VR headset in fall, the Quest Pro, that device is geared toward businesses and costs $1,100 more than the Quest 2, pushing it even further out of reach for many VR enthusiasts.
Meta decided over the summer to raise the price of the Quest 2 by $100, citing inflationary pressures.
Leo Gebbie, an analyst at CCS Insight, said in an email that Meta’s price increase was a surprise “given that the company has been willing to sell the headset at such a low margin to try and drive uptake of VR and gain a high market share.”
Meta declined to comment about its VR headset sales or third-party estimates.
All eyes on Apple
Next year is expected to be another “slow year” for the VR market, CCS Insight said in its latest report, citing a weak economy and inflation.
Gebbie said “consumer budgets will be tightening,” and “non-essential purchases like VR headsets are likely to be the casualty of this.”
Sony’s next-generation VR headset will cost $550 when it debuts in February. Arnold said that while the PlayStation VR2 will “give the market kind of a shot in the arm,” it will likely not influence the overall VR market as much as the Quest 2 because Sony’s device requires owners to have a PlayStation 5 as way to power the headset.
Sony PlayStation VR2 headset
Sony
“The total addressable market of the PSVR2 is going to be PlayStation owners,” Arnold said.
A major question for next year remains whether Apple, as long rumored, will unveil a VR headset.
Apple could create a compelling VR headset with an accompanying software ecosystem, Arnold said.
Additionally, Apple’s reputation as a leader in consumer technology could provide a spark to the dim VR market, making the technology more attractive to the general public.
“If one company has the ability to transform the VR market overnight, it’s Apple,” said Gebbie. “With its hugely loyal fanbase, many of whom are comfortable with spending large amounts of money on technology, if Apple was to launch a headset we expect that it would perform very well.”
Apple is reportedly building a VR headset with AR features for a release as soon as 2023.
Eric Abbruzzese, a research director at ABI Research, said Apple could have success launching a VR headset geared toward businesses, which would likely help lure developers to the community. But the high price of an enterprise VR headset, which would likely retail for several thousand dollars, would still make it difficult for Apple to move the needle, Abbruzzese said.
“It probably won’t even ship 5 million units in its first year,” Abbruzzese said of an Apple enterprise VR headset. “But it is the first notable product from a huge tech incumbent.”
Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.
One major thing the VR world lacks is a breakout hit, or a killer app.
Some games have gotten traction, like the musical rhythm game Beat Saber and VR versions of popular titles like Resident Evil, Abbruzzese said. And some users are showing more interest in using VR for fitness activities.
But in the console market, blockbuster games like FIFA and Call of Duty are “shipping hundreds of millions of products,” he said.
Meanwhile Meta’s Horizon Worlds social VR platform is still in its experimental phase.
“The only metaverse product really is Horizon and it’s not good right now,” Abbruzzese said.
WATCH: Meta has a tremendous future if it can just stop making mistakes
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is betting on ‘work in the metaverse’
Meta’s (META) shares sank this week after its disappointing third-quarter earnings report and as the company’s pivot to the metaverse draws increasingly negative sentiment.
In the year since Facebook became Meta, the company has spent billions investing in its metaverse plans. That investment has yet to pay off. For one, the division that oversees the company’s metaverse efforts, Reality Labs, has been losing money, clocking a loss of $3.7 billion last quarter alone.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts this week that he expects those losses to continue year-over-year. Still, as the company’s shares have suffered, Zuckerberg has this month begun touting something unexpected as a major opportunity. He says the future of work may lie in the metaverse and through the company’s newest virtual reality headset, the Meta Quest Pro.
“Work in the metaverse is a big theme for Quest Pro,” Zuckerberg told analysts in the company’s Wednesday earnings call. “There are 200 million people who get new PCs every year, mostly for work. Our goal for the Quest Pro line over the next several years is to enable more and more of these people to get their work done in virtual and mixed reality, eventually even better than they could on PCs.”
This month at Meta Connect, the company highlighted its new partnerships with enterprise tech giant Microsoft (MSFT) and professional services giant Accenture (ACN). It’s a surprising angle. After all, thinking about Meta still evokes images of a Facebook profile or, just maybe, a VR headset that we’d normally associate with gaming.
However, Needham Senior Analyst Laura Martin said there’s a lot about the future of work move that makes sense. Getting into the future of work, for one, “doubles their total addressable market,” Martin told Yahoo Finance. She added that the company’s new emphasis on mixed reality is also a “smart pivot” linked to the newly minted Microsoft and Accenture partnerships.
“My gut feeling is that the pivot towards mixed reality is informed because Microsoft and Accenture, who believe it’s more likely to succeed,” she said.
There’s certainly precedent out there for the work-metaverse conversation. For example, Autodesk (ADSK) this year acquired The Wild, an XR platform built specifically for architecture and construction professionals. There’s also a world of startups that includes companies like Virbela, which specifically brings VR to professional and educational environments.
To metaverse experts, there’s a chance Meta’s on to something — with caveats. Adam Voss and Josh Rush, co-founders at VR platform Surreal, believe that all companies will eventually have some sort of metaverse presence, but that not all workflows or trainings will be suited to that 3-D world.
“We believe that every company will eventually have a metaverse website,” Rush said. “That website will be a social, three-dimensional channel through which you can, say, run engagement events or their offices virtually… There’s also, of course a lot you wouldn’t want to replicate in a metaverse, because you need that hands-on experience.”
Human resources could be one example of work that could lend itself to the metaverse “from a branding perspective, as you’re recruiting for top talent,” Voss said.
It’s likely that Voss and Rush are right, that work applications in the metaverse will become more widespread, according to Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst J.P. Gownder. It’s unclear when that will happen — and if it will come in time for Meta to reap the benefits, he said.
“Metaverse for business is eventually going to be really important, but will it be two years? 10 years? That’s going to be the challenge,” Gownder said.
Beyond the time crunch, the company’s work-metaverse push has other problems. Reports that Meta’s own employees aren’t interested in using the company’s VR products should give us pause, said Oscar Mattsson, founder and CEO at startup Allwhere, which offers tech-based tools, equipment, and services to company workforces.
“The future of work is about people having a say in how and where they want to do their best work,” said Mattsson, an early WeWork employee. “For me, I think the future of work is about focusing on improving the reality we currently inhabit, instead of creating an odd facsimile.”
He’s also not sold on Meta’s headsets as being key to future work environments long-term — and certainly not in the near-term.
In the near-term, VR in the workplace en masse isn’t viable, said Adam Riggs, a former president of Shutterstock (SSTK) and current CEO of online workspace platform Frameable Spaces.
“Right now, based on what is available now or in the near future, VR is not a serious, inclusive, or sustainable way to enhance a remote or hybrid team’s performance,” he said. “The exceptions to this are specialized training applications, but for general office applications VR is not a viable path to better results.”
Mattsson voiced, perhaps, one thing we can all agree on: “Legless torsos are not the future of work.”
Allie Garfinkle is a Senior Tech Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @agarfinks.
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Facebook’s Metaverse Is An Empty, Sad And Unpopular Flop
Meta’s Facebook is (was?) one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, with billions of users. However, its failing virtual reality metaverse project, Horizon Worlds, isn’t doing nearly as well. In fact, a new report shows that barely anyone is spending much time in Horizon Worlds at all, with most user-created worlds going completely unvisited. Meanwhile, Second Life and VRChat have more concurrent users, according to folks at Meta.
According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, internal documents and employees at Meta paint a picture that nobody is really playing Horizon Worlds, its free-to-play virtual reality metaverse that lets users create and visit “worlds” with friends or strangers. Think Roblox, but more cold and heartless. The company initially hoped to have 500,000 monthly active users visiting these various virtual worlds. Now that number has been revised to around 200,000.
Internal stats show that most players don’t stick around after their first month in Horizon Worlds and Meta has seen a steady decline in active users since spring. WSJ reports that of all the user-created worlds in the game, only about nine percent are visited by more than 50 players. The majority of the rest are never visited by anyone besides the initial creator. The end result is a lot of empty, barren digital lands. Even Questy’s—-a world created by Meta as part of a larger Super Bowl marketing push—-is a giant flop, with very few users visiting.
“An empty world is a sad world,” said one document seen by the WSJ.
And while the Quest 2 headset has sold very well, a lot of the customers aren’t returning to play anything. It’s reported that more than half of all Quest headsets stop being used by players after only six months.
Read More: The Metaverse Is Already Here For Cows And Its Very Sad
As for why people aren’t flocking to the expensive metaverse that Facebook has created, a survey run by Meta researchers found users mostly complained about being unable to find worlds they liked and rarely found others to interact with. Other complaints included in-game people not looking “real” enough. Some even had issues with the lack of Horizon World avatar legs. I guess that explains all the fanfare around legs being added to the game earlier this month, even if the announcement was a lie.
The WSJ notes that the researchers at Meta only spoke to 514 people because of how few folks are playing, calling the current active playerbase “small and precious.” It’s not surprising to hear that, according to those familiar with Horizon Worlds, the app has fewer concurrent users than VRChat and 2003’s Second Life.
The rest of the report isn’t much better and is further evidence that the VR metaverse future that so many companies and tech bros are trying to peddle is likely not going to stick with folks. Hell, the people who work at Meta don’t want to use Horizon Worlds. And Meta seems to get how unpopular all this shit is with your average consumer, as it’s now begun to pivot its new VR headsets toward big companies that can be tricked into making their employees wear a VR headset for eight hours a day at work. But at least folks will always have the Walmart Metaverse to hang out in between breaks, right?
Meta’s flagship metaverse platform falls well short of user goal: Report
FOX Business’ Stuart Varney argues Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is running his company ‘into the ditch’ after the value of his business dropped by $251 billion.
Roughly a year after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rebranded his company as Meta Platforms Inc. and shifted its focus to the metaverse, the transition is struggling to gain traction, internal documents show.
Horizon Worlds, a free virtual reality online video game created by Meta Platforms Inc., has failed to meet internal performance expectations, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Internal documents obtained by the outlet show that Meta set a 500.000 monthly active users goal by the end of this year, and although Zuckerberg said the transition to the metaverse would take the company years to fully achieve, the company revised the projection to 280,000.
The current tally of users sits at less than 200,000, according to Wall Street Journal.
META WARNS 1M FACEBOOK USERS ABOUT ANDROID, IOS APPS USED TO STEAL LOGIN INFORMATION
Mark Zuckerberg, via video, speaks at the 2022 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 15, 2022, in Austin, Texas. (Samantha Burkardt/Getty Images for SXSW / Getty Images)
The documents show that most Horizon users typically stop using the app after the first month and that the user base has been consistently declining since the spring.
Meta’s popular social media products, including Facebook and Instagram, serve more than 3.5 billion average monthly customers compared to Horizon’s current numbers, which are equivalent to less than the population of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
FACEBOOK PARENT META TO SHRINK SOME OFFICES AS IT ADAPTS TO HYBRID WORK
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., speaks during the virtual Meta Connect event in New York, US. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
The Wall Street Journal reported that Horizon’s vast collection of virtual spaces where users appear as avatars and interact with others across the world are sparsely used, and only 9% of worlds built by creators are visited by at least 50 people, with many never being visited at all.
Complaints about “bugs” in the platform forced Meta to put Horizon on “lockdown” last month, which means new features will be paused until glitches are rectified, the outlet reported.
NY AND OTHER US STATES ASK APPEALS COURT TO REINSTATE LAWSUIT AGAINST FACEBOOK
Facebook’s Meta logo sign is seen at the company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar, File / AP Newsroom)
Meta shares are also down more than 60% over the past year, The Wall Street Journal reported, to go along with the company losing more than $700 billion in market value since September 2021.
This week, Zuckerberg revealed a new virtual-reality headset known as the Quest Pro, which he said will innovate standards in the metaverse technology world at a per unit cost of $1,500.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Meta Horizon Worlds metaverse losing users, falling short of goals: Report
Horizon Worlds, Meta‘s flagship metaverse for consumers, is failing to meet internal performance expectations, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed internal company documents.
Meta initially aimed to reach 500,000 monthly active users in Horizon Worlds by the end of the year, but the current figure is less than 200,000, according to the report. Additionally, the documents showed that most users didn’t return to Horizon after the first month on the platform, and the number of users has steadily declined since spring, the Journal said.
Only 9% of worlds are visited by at least 50 people, and most are never visited at all, according to the report.
The report comes as the company’s stock falls, user numbers decline and advertisers cut spending. Meta shares are down 62% so far this year.
Meta rebranded from Facebook last year in order to reflect the company’s ambitions beyond social media. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has specifically been interested in building out the metaverse, which is a virtual world that allows users to work and play together.
As a result, Meta created Horizon Worlds, which is a network of virtual spaces where users can engage with one another as avatars. Individuals can access Horizon through Meta’s Quest virtual-reality headsets.
In an effort to drum up some excitement around the metaverse, Zuckerberg unveiled his company’s newest virtual reality headset, dubbed the Meta Quest Pro, at Meta’s Connect conference Tuesday. The device costs $1,500 and contains new technologies, such as an advanced mobile Snapdragon computer chip.
A Meta spokesman told The Wall Street Journal that the company continues to make improvements to the metaverse, which was always meant to be a multiyear project. Representatives for Meta didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Meta has said it will release a web version of Horizon for mobile devices and computers this year, but the spokesman didn’t have any launch dates to disclose.
Read the full Journal report here.
Grimes calls Mark Zuckerberg ‘under-qualified’ to run the Metaverse
It seems as though it may take some convincing for Grimes if Mark Zuckerberg were ever to run the Metaverse.
The singer, 34, expressed her disdain over the tech mogul’s plans to expand the company formerly known as Facebook into a metaverse pioneer.
In fact, she thinks he’s “wildly under-qualified” to steer the ship.
Taking to Twitter Friday, the “Oblivion” hitmaker, who previously dated billionaire Elon Musk, slammed the Facebook founder’s Metaverse avatar.
“If Zuck ‘oversees the Metaverse’ it is dead and people who care about art and culture are building something else. Also this is bad art,” tweeted the singer, whose real name is Claire Boucher.
“The quality of this image alone speaks to how wildly under-qualified he is to build alternate reality, literally every indie game looks better.”
Last week, Zuckerberg posted an image of his Metaverse avatar on Facebook, but the response was far from what he had hoped.
He went on to share a different version of the avatar just days later.
“I know the photo I posted earlier this week was pretty basic — it was taken very quickly to celebrate a launch,” he wrote. “The graphics in Horizon are capable of much more — even on headsets — and Horizon is improving very quickly.”
Zuckerberg directed a companywide shift toward the metaverse last fall — going as far as to rebrand Facebook’s corporate name to Meta — as the embattled social media platform contends with a series of scandals over its business practices and internal policies.
Mark Zuckerberg responds to metaverse memes with a redesign
Zuckerberg debuted Horizon Worlds, a virtual reality social app, in France and Spain earlier this week, sharing a somewhat flat, goofy digital avatar posed in front of the Eiffel Tower and rolling green hills.
The internet immediately jumped in, mocking what many users viewed as (hopefully) preliminary graphics for a venture that Meta has spent at least $10 billion in the last year.
New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose compared the graphics to “worse than a 2008 Wii game” on Twitter. Slate used the term “buttcheeks.” Twitter was less kind: “eye-gougingly ugly” and “an international laughing stock” popping up.
Many compared the Metaverse design to early 90’s graphics and pointed out how lifeless and childish the Zuckerberg selfie looked. It quickly won the designation “dead eyes.”
Well, Zuckerberg has apparently seen the memes, because on Friday he announced there are major updates coming — along with new avatar graphics. On Facebook and Instagram, Zuckerberg posted a photo of his more advanced-looking avatar.
“I know the photo I posted earlier this week was pretty basic — it was taken very quickly to celebrate a launch,” Zuckerberg wrote in the caption, adding the graphics in Horizon “are capable of much more” and promising that it will be “improving very quickly.”
Zuckerberg added he will share more details at Connect, the company’s annual conference, which took place in October last year.
Facebook planned to spend at least $10 billion in 2021 on Facebook Reality Labs, dedicating significant resources toward its augmented and virtual reality products and services in last year’s third quarter results.
Horizon Worlds, from Meta for the Quest headset, is already available in the US, Canada and United Kingdom.
Mark Zuckerberg Responds To Bad Metaverse Graphics Backlash
Earlier this week was supposed to be a celebratory time for the folks at Meta, as its reality-devouring project Horizon Worlds was now available in more countries. The occasion was marked by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself posting a “selfie” of his in-game avatar in front of a digital Eiffel tower. Sounds cute, right? Problem was, the graphics were comparable to what you’d expect from a children’s game like Roblox, not from a multi-billion dollar company’s efforts to shape our collective virtual future. The internet immediately roasted Mark Zuckerberg’s selfie to hell and back. And now, Zuck is here to do some damage control.
Posting over on Instagram, for those of you who scrolled through enough recommended posts to see it, is an entirely new virtual rendition of Zuckerberg. This one, I’m happy to report, does appear to contain more life essence than the last one, though it’s unclear how many souls had to be sacrificed in order to give Mark a small glint in his eye. For those keeping count, this is the fourth or fifth VR version of Zucc we’ve gotten so far. However, the shitty one we just saw came after he showed us a really nice one a few years back. Which is to say, don’t assume what you’re seeing above will be permanent. He suggests as much in the post accompanying the new “selfie” when he says that the VR service is always evolving.
Major updates to Horizon and avatar graphics coming soon. I’ll share more at Connect. Also, I know the photo I posted earlier this week was pretty basic — it was taken very quickly to celebrate a launch. The graphics in Horizon are capable of much more — even on headsets — and Horizon is improving very quickly.
It’s true, screenshots of Horizon Worlds don’t always look as bad as what Zuckerberg shared earlier this week. But that’s also part of what made it so baffling; why is that what the company leader is showing off? At the same time, Horizon Worlds still doesn’t look nearly as good as what you can find in other VR offerings.
Many will say it’s about making sure Meta’s Quest hardware, which is priced for the average consumer, can handle tons of people at once. But there’s performance, and then there’s artistry. The thing everyone was responding to was what appeared to be a bleak lack of soul. We all know it doesn’t take a huge polygon count to make something look good, otherwise we wouldn’t remember retro games nearly as fondly as we do. The Eiffel Tower is supposed to be a significant cultural artifact, but you wouldn’t glean that from the VR version at all. The digital version isn’t inspirational, unless we’re trying to evoke a burp. It’s not even particularly pretty. What is the point?
Meta as a company leaves a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths already, so seeing them strong-arm their way into VR dominance with endless oodles of cash while appearing to have little care for the spirit of this thing that’s supposed to be our exciting technological future? That is what makes people jump when pastel Zucc doesn’t blink.
Anyway, better graphics! Woo.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Soulless Metaverse Avatar Keeps Getting Worse
“Metaverse” is a buzzword that has become quite popular in the last two years. Fortnite is a metaverse. Web3 and blockchain will help power the metaverse. Maybe cows will even be a part of it? However, nobody seems more invested in shaping our collective notion of what the metaverse is than Meta and Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg. Unfortunately for anyone eager to experience our glorious virtual future, what Zuckerberg has shown off of his vision of said future looks boring, drab, generic, and really shitty. It also serves as a nice reminder that rich tech bros shouldn’t be in charge of the future.
Earlier this week, the alien-wearing-a-human-skin-suit known to us as Mark Zuckerberg posted a VR selfie from inside his company’s metaverse project, Horizon Worlds. The selfie showed off the Eiffel Tower and was meant to announce that his metaverse is expanding to more countries. Instead, however, people immediately began dunking on the terrible picture, the ugly avatar, and how it all looked like it fell out of a 2005 edutainment game.
And oddly, this isn’t the first time Zuck’s showed off hideous avatars of himself in an attempt to lure people into his virtual-reality-powered nightmare world.
Back in 2017, Zuckerberg demonstrated the VR app Facebook Spaces using an ugly-as-sin avatar that vaguely looked like him, if the goal was to recreate the billionaire CEO as a smooth, cartoonish avatar you might see in a fever dream. Oh and for some reason, he decided the best way to show off this app and his awful avatar was to visit Puerto Rico via a video after it had been slammed by a powerful hurricane, killing thousands and destroying many of the island’s homes and businesses.
In 2021, ol’ Zuckie returned with an avatar that looked better than before. However, this avatar, which appeared in a video showcasing Facebook and Meta’s grand metaverse plans, isn’t actually real. It was instead created as part of a larger concept video showing what Meta was working toward. Still, even this avatar looks like someone who fell off the Polar Express.
And that brings us to 2022, where Zuckerberg’s avatar is a legless knock-off of a Nintendo Mii with some really weird buttons and the eyes of a corpse. And this isn’t just how Zuckerberg looks, this is the way all avatars appear in Horizon Worlds. I’ve played enough Horizon Worlds to tell you that the missing legs quickly cease to matter. But the lack of style and the cold, dead aesthetic never goes away.
Sure, part of the reason these avatars and worlds look simple and ugly compared to modern video games comes down to the limited VR hardware in Quest 2 and Facebook’s desire to make VR content that can run on as many devices as possible.
On the other hand, I can find Nintendo DS and Sony PS Vita games with better, nicer-looking art and models than what we’ve been shown so far in Facebook’s metaverse. I also don’t think you can blame the people making this stuff, as I assume they are more than capable of doing better and more vibrant things. But more and more, it seems that isn’t what Meta and Zucklehead want. Instead, they are focused on making a product that can be consumed by the masses and which lacks any defining characteristics in an attempt to get more people to dive in.
If you’re a current or former employee at Meta/Facebook and you’d like to confidentially speak to Kotaku about your experiences, please reach out to Tips@Kotaku.com.
This is the exact opposite approach we see in more community-driven VR metaverses like VR Chat, which looks better and feels warmer and more inviting. In comparison, Horizon Worlds looks like an animated video I’d walk by in some fancy hospital while I look for the bathroom.
And if this bland and ugly metaverse is the future Mark Zuckerberg wants and is investing billions of dollars into, I’m worried that it could end up winning out over other, better alternatives simply because he has the money and resources to squash or buy up competitors. Well, if it does win out, at least I’ll be able to skip it and not buy a new VR headset.