Meta's Horizon metaverse already has 10x more users since 2022 began
That's 10x player base growth since December.
- Meta made Horizon Worlds available to all U.S. and Canadian Quest 2 users in December 2021.
- Since the public launch, Meta's over-arching Horizons metaverse has seen a 10x increase in users, totaling 300,000 active users each month.
- This statistic includes Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues users combined.
The metaverse might be a relatively vague concept in some sense, but companies like Meta have slowly been creating the building blocks over the past few years. Horizon Worlds, Meta's virtual world that can be joined via a Meta Quest 2 - previously known as Oculus Quest 2 - headset, had been in beta for years before finally being released to the public in the U.S. and Canada in December 2021 for users 18 and up.
Since then, the Horizon metaverse has seen a 10x growth in players, up to 300,000 players joining in each month.
Meta recently announced this figure at a company meeting earlier this week, as noted by The Verge. The 300,000 monthly players figure is a combination of players on both Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues.
As a refresher, Horizon Worlds is the virtual world players can socialize in and build their own spaces, while Horizon Venues is a way to virtually experience concerts and other live events like sports.
Meta has never been particularly vocal about the number of users on any of its Horizon platforms, which includes Worlds, Venues, and Workrooms. Each of these apps is a separate space but utilizes your Meta avatar and requires an active Facebook account to join. Soon, even the Quest home screen will be known as Horizon Home - although that won't require a Facebook account just to use in the near future.
Another similar metaverse-style title, Rec Room, announced last January that it had surpassed 1 million active monthly users. Rec Room was one of the first big VR social spaces that launched back in 2016 alongside the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, so it's got a bit more history on its side as a publicly-available title than Horizon Worlds has.
Since its launch, Horizon Worlds has seen a number of quality improvement patches, including a personal boundary feature that was launched on February 4. Personal boundary gives players a literal 4ft-diameter invisible bubble around them to help ward against harassment and inappropriate behavior.
To date, Meta says that over 10,000 separate worlds have been built in Horizon, showcasing the platform's ability to scale well with whatever worlds players want to make. Conversely, this past weekend's virtual Foo Fighters concert in Horizon Venues didn't go as smoothly, with users on social media complaining that they were completely unable to join in on the music.
Clearly, the metaverse is growing.
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The Oculus Quest 2 can be used on its own or paired with a PC, making it the ultimate VR experience.