Meta's metaverse is going mobile — and leaving VR behind

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wears a virtual reality headset. credit should read GLENN CHAPMAN/AFP via Getty Images 2026-02-20T00:07:36.195Z Share Copy link Email Facebook WhatsApp X LinkedIn Bluesky Threads lighning bolt icon An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt.

Impact Link Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. Meta is shifting Horizon Worlds' focus from VR to a mobile app. Meta's Reality Labs, which has lost nearly $80 billion since 2020, sees mobile as a key growth area. Meta faces competition from Roblox and Fortnite in the mobile gaming market with Horizon. Meta is dialing back the metaverse to mean something far less futuristic: an app on your phone. The company, which spent billions of dollars to build Horizon Worlds — an immersive, virtual hangout zone on its Quest virtual reality headsets — is "shifting focus" for Horizon Worlds "to be almost exclusively mobile," according to a blog post published on Thursday.Horizon Worlds is part of Meta's Reality Labs division for VR products and smart glasses, a unit that has burned nearly $80 billion since 2020. "Last year, we began to experiment with Worlds as a mobile platform, and we saw positive momentum," wrote Samantha Ryan, Meta's vice president of content at Reality Labs. "Now, to truly change the game and tap into a much larger market, we're going all-in on mobile."The move signals how dramatically Meta has redrawn its VR ambitions. Every time Pranav publishes a story, you’ll get an alert straight to your inbox! Stay connected to Pranav and get more of their work as it publishes. Sign up By clicking “Sign up”, you agree to receive emails from Business Insider. In addition, you accept Insider's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Last month, Meta laid off roughly 10% of Reality Labs employees, closed three VR gaming studios it owned, and stopped releasing new content for Supernatural, a popular VR fitness app it acquired in 2023.Meta said it is still committed to virtual reality hardware and supporting third-party developers who create games for it. "We're in it for the long haul," Ryan wrote, and pointed to the company's "robust roadmap of future VR headsets tailored to different audience segments."Meta invested nearly $150 million in VR developer platforms in 2025, Ryan wrote, and she said that popular games like "The Thrill of the Fight 2," "Hard Bullet," and "UG" had earned "millions" in revenue. Still, she wrote that 86% of the time people spend in Meta's headsets is in third-party apps, not its own. The pivot to mobile effectively pits Horizon Worlds against entrenched competitors like Roblox and Fortnite that cater to casual mobile gamers rather than VR enthusiasts with headsets.On Meta's latest earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg pitched Horizon as the natural home for "immersive 3D" content: AI-generated scenes, objects, and mini experiences. Now, rather than putting on a headset, people could just spin up that content with a prompt and then share it straight into Instagram, Facebook, or Threads, he said. Have a tip?

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