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A day after announcing it was discontinuing Horizon Worlds from the Quest virtual reality headset. Meta The course has been changed. The company announced Wednesday that its VR platform will be available “for the time being.”
“We actually made the decision today to continue Horizon Worlds in VR for our existing games to support our fans who reached out to us,” Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said in an Instagram Story Q&A.
Meta previously announced on Tuesday that Horizon Worlds would be removed from the Quest Store at the end of this month and completely removed from VR headsets on June 15th. The company said that after that date, it will only be playable on its standalone mobile app.
Mehta confirmed the change in an email to CNBC on Thursday.
Bosworth said in a subsequent announcement that worlds developed with the Horizon Unity game engine will continue to be available only in VR, and no new games will be added to the VR social network.
“Most of our energy is going into mobile and the Metahorizon engine that’s there,” Bosworth said, adding that mobile apps already have “most of the consumer and creator energy.”
Horizon Unity supported Horizon Worlds from its launch in 2021 until September, when Meta announced it would be replaced by the new Horizon Engine at the Connect annual event.
According to Meta, Horizon Engine offers “smoother performance, sharper visuals, and the ability to support a larger audience.” The company is developing games for the Horizon Worlds mobile app, which will be released in 2023.
Horizon Worlds failed to gain mainstream popularity. CNBC previously reported that despite being a popular gaming platform, the platform never exceeded hundreds of thousands of monthly users. roblox regularly reports more than 100 million daily active users.
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