Meta’s Horizon Worlds experience ‘underperforming’

In brief

Meta’s Horizon World VR experience has been significantly underperforming, according to internal documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal.

Horizon Worlds currently has less than 200,000 monthly active users, well under expectations (Meta originally expected 500,000 by the end of the year, revised down to 280,000), according to documents. Most visitors to Horizon don’t return to the app after the first month, which has caused a decline in its user base since the spring.

Just 9% of worlds built by creators are ever visited by at least 50 people (most, according to the report, are never visited at all), and under 1% of users are creating worlds, the report adds. Payouts to creators have been paltry; the most lucrative world has brought in just $10,000 in the form of “in-world payments”.

Meanwhile, more than half of Meta’s Quest VR headsets aren’t in use six months after they are purchased. The entry model costs $400 and the latest model, revealed earlier this month, costs $1,500.

The number of concurrent Horizon users is behind both recent competitor VRChat, and 2003 online game Second Life. Meta employees aren’t jumping into Horizon much themselves.