meta social vr

Meta’s New First-person Shooter Aims to Highlight Improvements to ‘Horizon Worlds’

horizon worlds, meta horizon worlds, meta social vr, News, rec room, roblox, Social VR, VR Game, vrchat / Mike M. / August 1, 2023

Meta introduced a new game called ‘Super Rumble‘ to Horizon Worlds, something the company hopes will showcase a new generation of improved experiences on its own social VR platform.

Released after a successful beta weekend in May, the free-for-all first-person shooter is said to highlight new improvements to Horizon Worlds, such as “better graphics, deeper gameplay, and a variety of quests and rewards.”

Players can choose from six superpowers before each session, allowing them to outmaneuver opponents and develop their playstyles. Here’s how Meta describes each power:

Super Dash gives you super speed
Super Jump lets you launch into the air with explosive force
Super Ammo saves you from having to reload
Super Tough reduces the damage you’ll take from each hit
Super Net lets you immobilize other players
Super Punch lets you attack with a powerful punch

Super Rumble is aiming to offer a fast-paced experience, which serves up to two to six players, with each match lasting five minutes. The game also serves as a launching point for a new integrated system of player levels, quests, rewards, the latter of which includes avatar clothing, emotes, and nameplate titles.

Check out the action below:

We’ve seen a few first-party worlds alongside a number of third-party brand engagement experiences on Horizon Worlds since the platform launched in late 2021, however going the ‘full featured’ minigame route is a fairly recent move that has more potential to attract and keep users. It’s certainly helped Rec Room to become one of the most prolific social VR platforms to thrive on both VR headsets and traditional flatscreen devices.

Interestingly enough, this comes only one day after Meta opened Quest up the online gaming powerhouse Roblox, which is in direct competition with Horizon Worlds. Now, Quest users can choose between Roblox, Rec Room, VRChat, Horizon Worlds, and Gym Class to name a few of the top free social VR platforms.

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Report: Meta to Open ‘Horizon Worlds’ to Younger Teens Amid Renewed Retention Push

horizon, horizon vr, horizon worlds, horizon worlds app, Meta, Meta Quest 2, meta quest social, meta social vr, metaverse, News, Social Virtual Reality, Social VR / Mike M. / February 9, 2023

Meta’s social VR app for Quest, Horizon Worlds, is lagging behind the competition when it comes to attracting and retaining VR users. According to a leaked memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal, the company is now ostensibly looking to boost numbers by more transparently appealing to younger teens in addition to funding a slew of new second-party content.

WSJ only posted snippets of the memo, entitled ‘Horizon 2023 Goals and Strategy’, which was allegedly written by Meta Vice President of Horizon Gabriel Aul. The memo is said to outline the team’s objectives for the first half of 2023.

Here’s some highlights we formatted into a bulleted list, which also includes additional info supplied by a source cited by WSJ:

Competitors are outperforming HW. Improving user retention is most important, especially among teens and young adults
HW to open to teens aged 13 to 17, which could come as early as March
Meta is working with outside studios to build new worlds and experiences for HW
The team is aiming to launch at least 20 new Horizon-hosted experiences built by second-party studios. Of the 20, it’s hoping for five medium hits and at least one a major hit
The flatscreen version of Horizon for mobile and desktops is set to come sometime in H1 2023

Additionally, WSJ reports the memo outlined some key performance metrics, claiming Horizon Worlds’ weekly retention rate was 11% in January, which the company aims to increase to 20%. The goal for monthly active users for the first half of 2023 is said to be 500,000, with hopes of reaching one million for the full year. Currently the platform is at 200,000, or just below the December peak, the reported memo outlines.

The previously reported flatscreen version, which is said to launch by the end of the first half of 2023, is hoping to achieve 150,000 monthly cross-screen Horizon users.

Meta’s Quest 2 headset is technically only available to users aged 13 and up. Horizon Worlds on the other hand has been limited to users 18+ since it was launched in 2021, and only to those in US, Canada, UK, France, Iceland, Ireland and Spain.

While none of this seems to have hindered children below 13 from playing all the Quest 2 has to offer, Horizon Worlds included. More transparently appealing to young teens though will likely come with a host of safety requirements that the company needs to fulfil for liability reasons.

Meta issued a response to WSJ, supporting in part its move to focus on teens:

“Teens are already spending time in a variety of VR experiences on Quest,” Meta spokesman Joe Osborne told WSJ, “and we want to ensure that we can provide them with a great experience in Horizon Worlds as well, with age-appropriate tools and protections in place.”

This comes hot on the heels of Meta reducing its workforce by 13% late last year, one of the biggest tech layoffs in recent memory, which saw 11,000 jobs cut from payroll.

Meanwhile, the company’s Reality Labs XR division has dramatically increased its operating budget in an ostensible bid to maintain market dominance over similar metaverse pushes from the likes of Apple, Google, etc. At the same time, Meta has slashed some XR projects, including first-party title Echo VR.

Provided the report is true, it appears Meta is making another important step towards competing more directly with cross-platform social gaming titans like Roblox and Rec Room.

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Meta’s Social VR App is Coming to Web & Mobile Soon, Alpha Begins for Members-only Rooms

horizon worlds, Meta, meta horizon, meta horizon worlds, Meta Quest 2, meta social vr, News, Quest 2, rec room, roblox, Social Virtual Reality, Social VR / Blake Jones / January 31, 2023

Horizon Worlds, Meta’s social VR platform for Quest users, is expanding with alpha tests of new members-only spaces, allowing creators to manage up to 150 card-carrying members in their private worlds. Meta says it’s also gearing up to release Horizon Worlds on non-Quest devices for the first time.

Meta is now rolling out alpha access to its new members-only worlds, which aims to let creators build and cultivate a space in Horizon Worlds. Each members-only world can have up to 150 members, although only 25 concurrent visitors can gather at any given time.

“Every community develops its own norms, etiquette, and social rules over time as it fosters a unique culture,” the company says in a blogpost. “To enable that, we’ll provide the tools that allow the creators of members-only worlds to set the rules for their communities and maintain those rules for their closed spaces.”

Meta says moderation responsibilities can be shared among trusted members, so creators can better control who gets in and who’s kicked out, however the company says its Code of Conduct for Virtual Experiences is still in effect in privately owned spaces.

What’s more, the Quest-only social platform is also going to be available on the Web and mobile devices “soon”, the company says, adding that rules will be made and enforced “similarly to how mobile operating systems manage experiences on their platforms.”

As it is today, Horizon Worlds plays host to a growing number of user-generated content in addition to first-party worlds. The release of Horizon Worlds outside of Quest would represent a massive potential influx of users and user-generated content, putting it in direct competition with cross-platform social gaming titans such as Roblox and Rec Room.

As a similar free-to-play app, Horizon Worlds offers an Avatar Store featuring premium digital outfits—very likely only a first step in the company’s monetization strategy. For now, the company says it allows creators to earn revenue from purchases people make in their worlds, which includes hardware platform fees and a Horizon Worlds fee, which Meta says is 25 percent.

In late October, Meta showed off a tempting preview of its next-gen avatars, although it’s clear there’s still a ton of work to be done to satisfy its existing userbase. Floating torsos are still very much a thing in Horizon Worlds, and that’s despite Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s insistence that full body tracking was in the works. It was too good to be true.

For now, Horizon Worlds is only available on Quest 2 headsets in the US, Canada, UK, France, Iceland, Ireland and Spain—something we hope they change well before it ushers in flatscreen users.

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