Meta’s Horizon Worlds Sees Steady Growth

With Facebook betting its future on VR and the metaverse, and spending billions in the process, there seems to be some light at the end if the tunnel for the tech giant. With its new social VR platform, Horizon Worlds, now in excess of 300,000 monthly users, could it be shaping up to be the next big platform for digital connection?

The metaverse, since its concept announcement, has always been somewhat distant. But, it could be closer than one might think. Since the launch of Horizon Worlds in December 2021, Meta’s VR events space has been seen a 10x increase in monthly users.

Meta announced last week that 10,000 separate worlds have been built in Horizon Worlds to date, with the private Facebook group for creators now sitting at over 20,000 members.

Because it has only been a few months since Horizon Worlds has been made publicly accessible, it is still too early to tell whether the platform’s growth will continue on par, retaining users along the way, or if it has hit its peak. Considering the holiday season boost in sales for the Quest headset, it’s safe to say that this helped in driving interest for Horizon Worlds.

So, monthly active users have increased since announcement, and December saw a spike in sales for the Quest headset, but does this mean Meta is on the right track to make a success out of Horizon Worlds, and its Metaverse concept? It’s hard to say – Meta hasn’t disclosed exactly how many Quest headsets have been sold, but Zuckerberg recently said that Meta will release a version of Horizon Worlds for mobile later this year. Again – this could could be driven by success, or lack thereof.

Sure, Horizon is still in its infancy stage, but Meta are investing a lot of R&D to give it the best chance of success. Does it have a shot of being big? At this stage, it’s success will depend on a few things:

• Solving problems with content moderation and underage users in VR
• Making it reliable enough for millions to use
• Making it easily accessible for millions to use
• Introducing ways for creators to make money

It will be exciting to see how Horizon Worlds, and the metaverse grow with the passage of time.