Horizon Worlds is now available in France and Spain

 

Meta’s social virtual reality platform, Horizon Worlds, is being launched in France and Spain, expanding the number of markets from three to five. The platform has been available in Canada, U.K., and the U.S. for a while. Mark Zuckerberg announced the news with a Facebook post that had his Horizon Worlds avatar in front of a digital version of the Eiffel Tower. He also announced that they are planning to make the platform available in more countries.

 

Last year dated the launch of Horizon Worlds for anyone over the age of 18 in The United States and Canada. The United Kingdom was added to the roster this year in June. Meta announced in April that a web version of Horizon Worlds was in the works for users that do not have VR headsets.

Meta has been adding new features to Horizon Worlds as time passes, more notably safety features such as specific voice chat controls and personal boundary setter for users’ avatars. While Horizon Worlds is the most noticeable, Meta has a few other social apps that can be experienced via VR. Meta aims to create a metaverse made up of virtual worlds such as Horizon Worlds. The prediction of Meta is that users will use these social platforms to socialize with their friends more and more over time, even perhaps buying in-app items. Yet this still remains a distant dream.

Meta’s metaverse initiative

 

The company-formerly-known-as Facebook has been funneling money into their ambitious project for the metaverse for a while. Meta has also experienced a first time decline in their quarterly revenue in Q2 2022. However, the investments they have made into the metaverse have been slowly starting to look fruitful. Meta also announced as of February, Horizon Worlds had more than 300,000 monthly users.

Mark Zuckerberg talked about their project in their Q2 2022 earnings call. The Facebook founder said:  “This is obviously a very expensive undertaking over the next several years. But as the metaverse becomes more important in every part of how we live, from our social platforms, to entertainment, to work, and education and commerce, I’m confident that we’re going to be glad that we played an important role in building this,”

Zuckerberg also mentioned in April that Meta has lost 3$ billion during their metaverse ventures. However, he also mentioned that he expected that their investments would pay off by 2030.