Horizon Worlds Is Reportedly Falling Short of Meta's Performance Expectations

Meta's flagship metaverse app, Horizon Worlds, is reportedly falling short of the company's performance expectations, with the app facing a number of technological limitations and not enough users as well as the company not having a clear plan on how to make the app succeed. 

According to The Wall Street Journal, which cites Meta's internal documents, the company's initial goal was to attract about 500,000 monthly active users to Horizon Worlds by the end of 2022, however, a few weeks ago, this figure was revised and cut to 280,000.

Meanwhile, the current MAU, according to the documents, reaches less than 200,000. In comparison, other Meta apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp combined, have over 3.5 billion average monthly users.

If the information is to be believed, the documents also reveal that there are almost no returning users in Horizon Worlds – almost nobody used the app again after the first month and the number of users has gradually declined since spring. In addition, only 9% of the app's worlds built by creators are visited by at least 50 people, while most of the worlds are never visited at all. 

One of the problems here may be the steadily decreasing retention rate of Meta’s Quest VR headsets which are used to access Horizon Worlds. According to the WSJ, which cites people familiar with the data, over half of the headsets aren't used in six months after their purchase.

Another reason for not meeting Meta's goals may be that the app has a number of issues, as it was recently reported, which is why Horizon Worlds was quietly put on a "quality lockdown" for the rest of the year meaning that no new features (apparently except metalegs) will be added to the app so far and developers will be only working on improving the current user experience.

In addition, as was previously reported, the app's developers themselves do not use Horizon Worlds enough which is why Meta reportedly decided to "hold managers accountable" for having their teams use the app at least once a week. 

You can learn more by reading the WSJ's report here. Also, don't forget to join our Reddit page and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.