The first foray into the metaverse (“Horizon Worlds”) should leave even its own employees cold

Meta (formerly Facebook) believes the Metaverse is the digital future. So far, however, the whole thing remains a rather vague concept, which each company seems to understand differently. Mark Zuckerberg’s posts with images from the “Horizon Worlds” application (see the image for the article) then caused more laughter than impressions. Colleagues at The Verge now want to have received an internal memo, that even Meta employees haven’t been impressed with “Horizon Worlds” so far.

As a result, even the “Horizon Worlds” app development team is hesitant to use it. There are too many bugs and quality issues. Therefore, the application can no longer be activated for other users this year. (Horizon Worlds is already available for Meta Quest 2.) That’s according to an internal memo from Metaverse VP Vishal Shah. He would have sent it on September 15, 2022.

“Horizon Worlds” is kind of a mix of “Roblox” and “Minecraft”. In the application world, users can interact with each other through avatars. To be honest, this all doesn’t seem particularly new or impressive to me so far. It currently looks like Meta Quest 2 owners can already use Horizon Worlds. However, an extension to mobile devices and desktop PCs via a web version is planned. Judging by the memo from the meta-manager, this should be delayed.

He then draws a sobering conclusion: it’s clear that the development team is using or barely wants to use “Horizon Worlds” itself. But if you are not enthusiastic about your own product, it will be difficult to enthuse others. In another note, Shah then urged staff to start testing Horizon Worlds themselves at least once a week.

This tells me: For the moment, internally at Meta, apart from the responsible managers, only a few developers believe in the success of “Horizon Worlds”. I feel like the management team came up with an idea that they thought was innovative and exciting, and no one really dared to contradict the management level. In the end, you have a product that no one really likes – except those who want to cramp it.

This article contains affiliate links, so we mark it as advertisement. By clicking on it, you will directly access the supplier. If you decide to make a purchase there, we will receive a small commission. Nothing changes in the price for you. Thank you for your support!