Horizon is now one of the top 10 most-used apps on Quest

Horizon is now one of the top 10 most-used apps on Quest

Meta's proto-metaverse Horizon Worlds seems to be slowly turning into a success.

FACTS

In a conference call with investors on the occasion of the latest, quite positive quarterly results, Mark Zuckerberg revealed an interesting detail:

Horizon is growing quickly too. It's now in the top 10 most-used apps on Quest and we have an exciting roadmap ahead. This is another example of applying the long-term playbook I discussed earlier with AI, but in another area. We take the time to build up the core tech and tune the experience, and then when it's ready we're good at growing things. Our focus for this year will be on growing the mobile version of Horizon as well the VR one.

Last year, Meta released a number of high-quality in-house productions for the platform, including Super Rumble, Citadel and Shootball, gave Avatars finally legs and launched a beta for a mobile and web version of Horizon Worlds.

CONTEXT

The graphically underwhelming Horizon Worlds, with its cartoonish avatars, was and still is a popular target for Internet ridicule, as there is a huge disparity between Meta's grandiose Metaverse vision and Horizon Worlds in its current state. The mockery reached its peak after Mark Zuckerberg posted a lifeless avatar selfie of himself from Worlds.

The growing number of users may also be due to the fact that Meta is increasingly integrating its own proto-Metaverse into the Quest interface. For example, the Explore Feed was renamed to the Horizon Feed a few months ago. It offers destinations to Horizon Worlds and cannot be disabled. This way, there is almost no way around Horizon Worlds for Quest users.

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Since its launch in North America, the platform has been painfully slow to roll out to other countries. The platform launched in the U.S. and Canada in December 2021, in the U.K. in June 2022, in Ireland and Iceland in July 2022, and in France and Spain in August 2022. No new countries have been added since then.