Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues together have 300,000 monthly users, Meta confirmed to The Verge.
Horizon is Meta’s brand for its suite of “metaverse” social VR apps: Horizon Worlds, Horizon Workrooms, Horizon Venues, and the soon-to-launch Horizon Home. Each uses your Meta Avatar and each requires an active Facebook account for access.
Worlds is similar to platforms like Rec Room, allowing users to create their own social experiences inside VR by using controllers to place & manipulate shapes and using a visual scripting system to add dynamic functionality. It was renamed from just ‘Facebook Horizon’ in October and launched to US & Canadian adults in December after a two-year closed beta. While it’s currently only available on the Quest and Rift VR systems, Meta plans to bring it to smartphones later this year.
Venues is a Quest exclusive live events platform to co-watch 180 degree video livestreams including NBA games, big name concerts, and VR esports competitions.
A source of The Verge within Meta told the outlet that executives revealed during an all-hands meeting that Horizon Worlds & Horizon Venues combined have 300,000 monthly active users (MAU), and a Meta spokesperson confirmed the statistic to the outlet.
Combining both apps in one statistic conveniently means Worlds can’t be directly compared to its competitors like Rec Room, since it’s unclear how many people only used Venues. Rec Room reported more than 1 million monthly VR headset users six months ago, with millions more on non-VR platforms like Xbox and smartphones. VRChat and AltspaceVR do not report such statistics.
On Sunday Meta ran a Super Bowl ad for Horizon Worlds and Quest 2, depicting the new “Questy’s” World designed as a showcase of the platform’s lighting, physics, and scripting system. It’s not clear when we might get the next update on Horizon’s user base, and Meta hasn’t announced a timeframe for bringing Worlds to countries outside North America.
