Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued • Hacker News Board

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#41

Post by mosura » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

xd1936 wrote: post #4

Unbelievable. They re-architected the whole operating system around this stupid app. They discontinued their previous homescreen environments in favor of trying to promote Horizon Worlds, only to discontinue the blasted thing anyway? After all of those millions of dollars spent trying to make virtual events happen?

The usage numbers probably reflect what happened in this house: since the pestering to confirm age and the horizon worlds update the Meta VR devices have literally not been recharged.

They had the foundation of something half reasonable at one point, but their product management clearly got in the way.

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#42

Post by d--b » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

That sucks.

At least they had a purpose, a vision.

Now Zuckerberg is going to be all sour about it and even more cynical about everything.

They’re going to go back to what they know how to do: optimize for attention and sell personal data.

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#43

Post by rchaud » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 7:55 PM UTC

jryio wrote: post #11

Historians will write about the 'metaverse' as the last software frontier humanity embarked on before AI. What a shame. Hopefully capitalism and AI research does not produce equally bad products and ideas.

If they mention it at all, it'll be in the context of the C-suite envy about the money being made with Fortnite skins and "virtual assets", resulting in galaxy brain ideas like "buy land in the metaverse" or "own rare art with NFTs".

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#44

Post by slaw » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 7:55 PM UTC

senderista wrote: post #25

Imagine what $100B could have done for medical or energy research.

40 nuclear power plants.

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#45

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 7:55 PM UTC

Raed667 wrote: post #36

kemotep wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billions. Facebook has spent billions and billions over the past decade in VR. Starting with the Oculus merger and then in 2021 with the rebrand. 10 billion a year supposedly for the past 5 years now.

I kept saying to myself, they must be seeing something I'm not... I guess not

"The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."

- All The President's Men

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#46

Post by mikepurvis » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 7:55 PM UTC

tyleo wrote: post #20

IncreasePosts wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense to rebrand anyway, because I'm sure they don't want people to only think of "that social media site" for all of their other ventures. Just like Google rebranding as alphabet

IDK, I still call Google "Google". I even hear employees refer to the entity as "Google". The Meta rebranding seems different.

I think for Google the more meaningful other brands are the actual product ones, like Waymo, Nest, YouTube, Calico, Verily. Those are the ones that benefit from being able to distance themselves a bit from being "a Google company" and all the baggage that comes with that, eg an assumption that it'll be shuttered at some point, will pivot massively into ads, whatever.

I don't think Meta has nearly that need. It's "other companies" are Instagram and Whatsapp, which are basically in the exact same space as Facebook.

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#47

Post by CobrastanJorji » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 7:56 PM UTC

xd1936 wrote: post #4

Unbelievable. They re-architected the whole operating system around this stupid app. They discontinued their previous homescreen environments in favor of trying to promote Horizon Worlds, only to discontinue the blasted thing anyway? After all of those millions of dollars spent trying to make virtual events happen?

They also renamed the entire corporation from "Facebook" to "Meta" to prove how serious they were about it.

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#48

Post by andybak » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 7:56 PM UTC

Eufrat wrote: post #35

sergiotapia wrote: post #15

The quest is such a beautiful device. I hope they continue to work on it and release new versions. VR is so good and still in it's infancy.

> VR is so good and still in it's infancy. I believe 30% of the population cannot use VR in any way shape or form because your inner ear has decided the floor is the only place you can be.

Even for games or experiences with no artificial locomotion whatsoever?

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#49

Post by jeffbee » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 7:56 PM UTC

Second Life, which contains only niche perverts, has more concurrent actives than Horizon Worlds.

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#50

Post by robot_jesus » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 7:56 PM UTC

senderista wrote: post #25

Imagine what $100B could have done for medical or energy research.

As a thought experiment, they probably helped the world global happiness more by burning $100B rather than just sitting on a massive cash hoard as so many tech companies enjoy doing. Sitting in their coffers it was doing nothing. At least this way, it went to a whole bunch of individuals, manufacturing startups, etc. And theoretically many of those recipients spent some of it.

I'm not saying it wasn't wasted spend, but velocity of money is a thing and maybe it's better off in the hands of the people who it was spent on instead of sitting in Zuck's war chest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money