Meta shifts Horizon Worlds to mobile and separates it from Quest VR

Meta announced in a developer blog post dated Feb. 19 that it is "explicitly separating our Quest VR platform from our Worlds platform and shifting the focus of Worlds to be almost exclusively mobile," Samantha Ryan, vice president of content for Reality Labs, wrote. The move restructures the company’s flagship metaverse product away from virtual reality and toward a smartphone audience.

The company said Horizon Worlds will be repositioned as a mobile, non‑VR software experience while Quest will remain a distinct hardware and platform business. Meta also said it would discontinue Horizon Workrooms, put the VR fitness app Supernatural into maintenance mode and pause a program to share the Meta Horizon operating system with third‑party headset makers. TechCrunch reported that Supernatural had been acquired by Meta in 2023 for $400 million.

The announcement caps months of retrenchment inside Reality Labs. Meta laid off about 10 percent of the division earlier this year; TechCrunch, citing the Wall Street Journal and CNBC, put that figure at roughly 1,500 employees. Bloomberg, as reported by TechCrunch, said Meta had slashed portions of its virtual reality budgets by up to 30 percent. Several VR game studios were shuttered or hit by cuts in the same period, with TechCrunch naming Armature Studio, Twisted Pixel and Sanzaru Games and noting layoffs at Camouflaj. Other outlets reported overlapping lists of affected studios.

Meta framed the change as a way to reach a larger audience: "Last year, we began to experiment with Worlds as a mobile platform, and we saw positive momentum. Now, to truly change the game and tap into a much larger market, we’re going all‑in on mobile," Ryan wrote. The shift positions Horizon Worlds to compete directly with entrenched mobile user‑generated platforms such as Roblox and Fortnite.

The company stressed it remains committed to VR hardware. "We’re in it for the long haul," Ryan wrote, adding that Meta has "a robust roadmap of future VR headsets tailored to different audience segments." At the same time, Ryan noted that "86% of the time people spend in Meta’s headsets is in third‑party apps, not its own," a statistic that underscores why Meta says supporting external developers will remain a priority. Ryan also said Meta invested nearly $150 million in VR developer platforms in 2025 and cited popular third‑party VR titles that earned "millions" for creators.

The pivot has drawn pointed commentary. Techbuzz Ai called the announcement a move that "just pulled the plug on its VR‑first metaverse dream" and a tacit admission that the VR revolution is behind schedule. Kotaku characterized the change bluntly as "ditching VR to make a Roblox clone," framing the decision as a philosophical reversal from the company's 2021 rebrand to Meta and its multi‑billion dollar investment in immersive hardware.

Financial strain was central to the shift. Business Insider reported Reality Labs has burned "nearly $80 billion since 2020," while Kotaku cited a $70+ billion figure, differences the company will need to reconcile publicly. For creators, employees and headset owners, the announcement signals a narrower role for VR experiences as Meta pivots resources toward mobile scale and other corporate priorities.