The seven people using Meta’s Horizon Worlds just got some potentially harrowing news: major metaverse cuts could be in the pipeline. According to a report from Bloomberg, Meta is expected to slash its Reality Labs budget, shaving off as much as 30%. Those cuts may be imminent, too, arriving as soon as January as Meta prepares its budget for the new calendar year.
Though Reality Labs comprises lots of different aspects of Meta’s XR and VR interests, Bloomberg says they will feature two categories prominently, including the aforementioned Horizon Worlds, Meta’s once-championed virtual meeting place for the metaverse. Additionally, another recently embattled category, virtual reality, may also see the brunt of the cuts as Meta pivots its interest and money towards AR and smart glasses with its increasingly crowded array of Ray-Ban and Oakley hardware.
On one hand, major cuts to the Reality Labs division of Meta shouldn’t come as a surprise. As Bloomberg mentions, the unit has been hemorrhaging money since 2021, to the tune of $70 billion (yes, with a “b”). I’m no corporate accountant, but if you were looking for a way to shore up money for a big AI push, Reality Labs seems like an obvious place to start. What is shocking, at least with context from a few years ago, is just how bungled its massive metaverse bet was. Sure, we eventually got legs in VR, but remember these Nintendo Wii graphics? Or Horizon Worlds’ vast expanses of nothingness? Or how about the fact that in 2021, the entire company changed its name from Facebook, to f*cking Meta?
Horizon Worlds and the metaverse were so bungled, in fact, that Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has taken to just not mentioning either at all, at least in any kind of public capacity. Unfortunately, in business, much like in life, if you ignore your lonely, formerly legless avatar problem, it does not simply go away. The good news is nary a one of us will mourn the loss of Horizon Worlds if the metaverse armageddon does come to pass.
On the VR and Quest headset side of things, though, sentiments might be different. I, along with some other folks, actually like Meta’s XR headset, especially the Quest 3 and 3S. I might not really use my headset often, but when I do, I can appreciate it for what it is—an affordable, fairly lightweight XR headset that does pretty much everything you need to do reasonably well. But a device you kind of use sometimes (if you remember you own it) probably isn’t great for courting investors when you’re losing billions of dollars, and it certainly pales in comparison to the draw of AI slop and massive, power-hungry data centers.
And hey, maybe even with potentially steep cuts, Horizon Worlds will narrowly escape the specter of a Mesozoic-level extinction and trudge on to become the all-encompassing wacky virtual world that was prophesied. Then again, you technically don’t have to wait around for that reality to take shape at all. You could just, I don’t know, go play Fortnite instead.