Meta has announced a significant strategic pivot for its immersive platform, Horizon Worlds, moving its focus away from virtual reality and towards a mobile-first experience. The tech giant confirmed it is shifting Horizon Worlds to be “almost exclusively mobile” and is “explicitly separating” its Quest VR platform from the virtual world, signaling a major rethink of its metaverse ambitions.
A Strategic Shift From VR To Mobile
Originally launched in 2021 as a flagship VR experience, Horizon Worlds is now repositioning itself to compete directly with established mobile giants like Roblox and Fortnite. The company stated that to “truly change the game and tap into a much larger market, we’re going all-in on mobile.”
Samantha Ryan, VP of Content at Reality Labs, elaborated on the strategy in a blog post.
“We’re in a strong position to deliver synchronous social games at scale, thanks to our unique ability to connect those games with billions of people on the world’s biggest social networks. You saw this strategy start to unfold in 2025, and now, it’s our main focus.”
Despite this pivot, Ryan noted that Meta remains committed to its VR hardware division, stating, “We have a robust roadmap of future VR headsets that will be tailored to different audience segments as the market grows and matures.”
The Financial Realities of Reality Labs
The strategic shift follows staggering financial losses for Meta’s Reality Labs division, which has lost nearly $80 billion since 2020. The financial pressure has been accompanied by significant restructuring.
Last month, Meta laid off approximately 1,500 employees from Reality Labs, representing about 10% of the unit’s staff, and shut down several VR game studios. Furthermore, the VR fitness app Supernatural, acquired by Meta in 2023, will reportedly cease producing new content and shift into “maintenance mode.”
The New Focus on AI Wearables
Meta’s pivot away from a VR-centric metaverse coincides with a new, aggressive push into artificial intelligence. The company is now channeling its investments into developing AI wearables and advancing its proprietary AI models.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized this new direction during the latest earnings call, stating, “It’s hard to imagine a world in several years where most glasses that people wear aren’t AI glasses.”
Zuckerberg also highlighted the early success of this strategy, noting that sales of Meta’s smart glasses had tripled over the past year, calling them “some of the fastest-growing consumer electronics in history.”
Implications For The MENA Tech Ecosystem
Meta’s strategic overhaul sends clear signals to the MENA startup and investment community. For the region’s burgeoning gaming and social app startups, this move validates a mobile-first approach, suggesting that even the biggest players see the largest addressable market on mobile devices, not niche hardware.
Conversely, for MENA-based startups and investors who went all-in on VR-dependent metaverse projects, this serves as a cautionary tale. The pivot from a global leader like Meta may cool investor sentiment for capital-intensive VR ventures, shifting focus towards more immediate and scalable AI and mobile applications. This change could create new opportunities for regional developers to build experiences for the more accessible mobile version of Horizon Worlds, while also accelerating the race to integrate practical AI into consumer products.
About Meta
Meta Platforms, Inc. is a global technology conglomerate that builds technologies to help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. The company operates a family of apps and services, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, and WhatsApp. It is also heavily invested in developing future technologies like augmented and virtual reality, as well as artificial intelligence.
Source: TechCrunch
