Strategic major withdrawal! Meta urgently shrinks its VR front, with resources fully tilted towards AI and smart glasses

Zhitong Finance APP noted that Meta (META.US) announced that its Quest headset users will no longer have access to Horizon Worlds. This is a virtual destination where people can gather and play games through cartoon avatars, marking the latest contraction of the so-called "metaverse" vision strategy that Mark Zuckerberg once viewed as core.

The company stated on Tuesday that starting June 15, consumers will no longer be able to build, publish, or update virtual reality worlds on the Meta Quest headset, nor will they be able to access Meta Horizon Worlds through the device. Users can still access these virtual worlds via the Meta Horizon mobile app.

Meta mentioned in a blog post that the company is "shifting the focus of Worlds almost entirely to mobile"—a sign of the impending changes.

Prior to this move, the team responsible for the headset and its virtual reality products (the Reality Labs division) had already faced layoffs. In January of this year, Meta began cutting 1,000 positions from that division and closed several virtual reality game and content studios.

Andrew Bosworth, the Chief Technology Officer leading Reality Labs, stated in a letter to employees at that time that Meta would primarily focus on mobile experiences rather than fully immersive virtual worlds accessed through headsets.

Zuckerberg's push for the metaverse—an effort he was once deeply convinced of, even renaming Facebook to Meta—has long been scrutinized by investors and child safety regulators. Just a few years after the rebranding, and after investing hundreds of billions of dollars, the company has shifted its spending towards the rapidly growing artificial intelligence race.

At Reality Labs, resources have been redirected from VR gaming to wearable products that can advance Zuckerberg's AI ambitions, including Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses