We recently reported on Meta’s private (but leaked) acknowledgement that its Horizon Worlds virtual world was still hampered by “papercuts, stability issues, and bugs”. And we also reported this month on speculation about the usage figures of web3 virtual worlds Decentraland and The Sandbox.
To complete a trio of metaverse-doubting stories, now Horizon Worlds’ figures are in the spotlight.
The Wall Street Journal got its hands on internal documents from Meta suggesting that the company was hoping for 500,000 monthly active users (MAUs) for Horizon Worlds by the end of 2022, but has “in recent weeks revised that figure to 280,000. The current tally is less than 200,000”.
It also suggested that this user-base has “steadily declined since the spring” because “most visitors to Horizon generally don’t return to the app after the first month”. Oh, and only 9% of worlds built by people within Horizon Worlds – which has a strong UGC element – are ever visited by more than 50 people. Oof.
In June, IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo estimatedthat Meta had sold 14.8m units of its Quest 2 VR headset since its launch in Q4 2020. If true, that would suggest that fewer than 1.4% of Quest 2 owners are currently actively using Horizon Worlds. Double oof.
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