Bloomberg News reported on the 17th (local time) that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, will shut down "Horizon Worlds," a platform where users of its Virtual Reality (VR) headset "Quest" can meet as avatars in virtual spaces and enjoy games.
According to Bloomberg, Meta said that starting June 15, the Metaverse service "Horizon Worlds" will no longer be available on the Quest VR headset. The PC version and smartphone service of Horizon Worlds will continue.
Meta said, "We are shifting the core of Horizon Worlds to mobile."
Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has pushed a three-dimensional Virtual Reality (VR) service based on VR headsets as a core strategy, even changing the company name from Facebook to Meta. But as the related business failed to deliver results, including posting losses for years, last year the company decided to reorganize around smart glasses and has been cutting related staff and investment.
In January this year, the company laid off about 1,000 people in the "Reality Labs" division that develops VR technology and services and closed some VR game and content studios.
Meta plans to redirect resources previously allocated to its VR business into AI-based wearable devices, including smart glasses.
The smart glasses that Meta developed in partnership with Ray-Ban have been well received by the market. Earlier, in its fourth-quarter earnings announcement, Meta said sales of the smart glasses more than tripled from a year earlier.