Meta Shuts Down Horizon Worlds VR, Pivots to Mobile After ₱4.78 trillion ($80 billion) Loss
Meta Reality Labs VP of Content Samantha Ryan announced in February that the company is shifting Horizon Worlds focus to mobile, with VR headset support ending June 15. Reality Labs posted a ₱358.23 billion ($6 billion) loss in Q4 2025 alone.
Key Takeaway
Meta's $80 billion metaverse experiment ends with VR shutdown and a pivot to mobile—five years too late.
Meta Reality Labs VP of Content Samantha Ryan said in February that the company is shifting the focus of Worlds to be almost exclusively mobile. Users will no longer be able to build, publish, or access Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest headsets after the June 15 deadline.
Reality Labs posted a ₱358.23 billion ($6 billion) loss in Q4 2025 alone, a record for the division. Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth told staff in January the company would focus on mobile experiences instead of fully immersive virtual worlds accessed via headsets, leading to 1,000 job eliminations from the metaverse unit.
Meta acquired Oculus VR for ₱119.41 billion ($2 billion) in March 2014 and launched Horizon Worlds as a VR-only platform in late 2021. The bet hasn't paid off. Fortnite pulls 1.3 million daily active users without ever officially developing for VR, while Roblox commands 144 million daily users and only added a VR app in July 2023 as an afterthought.
Meta stock jumped 3% on Monday following a Reuters report that the company could cut up to 20% of its workforce. The market clearly wants Meta to pull back on metaverse spending.
The company introduced a Meta Credits monetization system in October 2024, but it was too late to salvage the VR platform. Reality Labs has burned through ₱4.78 trillion ($80 billion) since 2020 chasing Mark Zuckerberg's vision of immersive virtual worlds, only to abandon the core technology by June 15, 2026.
This article was written based on reporting from Cointelegraph.
