1st Century Business Herald reporter Cai Shuyue Shanghai reported
, the meta-universe social product Horizon Worlds, which was highly anticipated by Meta, has handed over a not very satisfactory report card.
Recently, an internal document from Meta company showed that the total number of monthly active users of Horizon Worlds is less than 200,000, which is a big gap from Meta's previously set target of 500,000, and it has not even reached the 280,000 monthly active users after the downgrade.
In addition, the internal employee record files also mentioned that most Horizon Worlds users no longer use the app after using it for a month, and the number of user groups has been on a downward trend since the spring of 2022.
html From 0 to the present, Meta's stock price has fallen by more than 60%. The secondary market is obviously pessimistic about Meta's yuan universe plan. Why can Horizon Worlds still not attract enough users after investing 10 billion yuan? Has Meta's perception of the metaverse been deviated? How long will it take to be completed before the real meta-cosmic "park" is built?unpleasant product
On October 28, 2021, at the Connect conference held by Facebook, which has not yet been renamed, Meta founder Zuckerberg officially announced that the company will undergo strategic transformation, focusing on the development of the meta-universe, and renamed the company to "Meta Platforms". In the future, the Reality Labs department will undertake the company's meta-universe business, and each of Meta's core business, social network, to carry the "half of Meta's territory".
can better show Meta's determination to enter the meta-universe from the investment of manpower and financial resources. Meta has drawn Andrew Bosworth, who joined Facebook in 2006 and is currently the group's chief technology officer, and Vishal Shah, former director of Instagram, took over the development of the Metaverse project. In addition, Meta announced that it will invest 10 billion yuan in the Meta Universe project in 2022.
Two months later, Horizon Worlds, a VR social platform developed by Meta, was officially launched. The launch of this product is not only an iteration of its predecessor, Horizon, VR platform, but also a concrete manifestation of Meta's ambitions for the meta-universe.
" joined and became part of the metaverse." This is Slogan displayed in the official website of Horizon Worlds.
According to its official website, users can walk around freely, meet new people, play games, attend parties, etc. in Horizon Worlds. It can be said that Horizon Worlds is more like a "VR version of Facebook".
Meta is very hard-working in promoting Horizon Worlds, but the effect is not ideal.
html In August, to celebrate the launch of Horizon Worlds in France and Spain, Zuckerberg posted a tweet saying, "I look forward to seeing more people explore and build an immersive world here", and posted his selfie in Horizon Worlds. Zuckerberg's slightly stiff expression, an overly simple background, and the abrupt Eiffel Tower and the Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona form the picture.(Horizon Worlds by Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta)
selfie was released, and it attracted overwhelming complaints. Some netizens compared this screenshot with the virtual reality game "Second Life" released in 2007. "The picture (Horizon Worlds) looks like a 1997 PC game." Some netizens said bluntly.
Also disappointed with the meta-universe portrayed by Meta are investors. On July 28, it was mentioned in Meta's Q2 2022 financial report as of June 30 that Reality Labs only achieved revenue of US$452 million in the quarter. Meta's meta-universe revenue fell further in the quarter compared to $877 million and $695 million in the previous two quarters.
On the other hand, Meta's internal employees also seem to be not interested in Horizon Worlds, which has put a lot of effort into it. Another internal meta document disclosed by technology media The Verge shows that Vishal Shah had called on employees to increase the frequency of using Horizon Worlds.
"Why don't we like a product that we spend so much time building and always need us to use? A simple fact is, if we don't like this product, how can we expect our users to like it? " he said.
However, although market views generally believe that Horizon Worlds is unlikely to become a killer meta-universe app in the short term, its Quest series VR headset still has a significant market share advantage. In March, data from the global quarterly tracking report of AR/VR headsets by International Data Corporation (IDC) showed that Meta Quest 2 accounted for 78% of the AR/VR market in 2021. The second and third-ranked DPVR and Pico have only market share of 5.1% and 4.5% respectively.
high cost social
"An empty, sad world." Meta's internal documents describe the performance of Horizon Worlds.
As a meta-universe "park" created by Meta injected a lot of money, why is it difficult for Horizon Worlds to attract users to buy tickets and stop and play? In addition to the criticized picture,
, according to the feedback from the official website users, the difficulty in loading the application, too many bugs, no set of guidelines to restrict players' words and deeds, and that most players are minors are the main aspects of dissatisfaction with users.
(On the official website of Horizon Worlds, 29% of users gave the app a rating of only 1 star)
iMedia Consulting CEO Zhang Yi mentioned in an interview with 21st Century Business Herald reporter that if VR social apps like Horizon Worlds want to become mainstream, the core issue is how to improve the user experience. Overall, he believes that the experience of VR social products on the market is not very good.
Zhang Yi further pointed out that there are two main reasons for this situation.
On the one hand, VR devices on the market, including Quest, are not currently affordable, and a truly popular social platform must allow users to enter at a low threshold to form a large enough user base.
It is worth noting that since this year, Meta has raised the pricing of Quest headsets. On July 26, Meta announced that starting from August 1, the 128GB and 256GB versions of the Quest 2 will be raised by $100 to $399.99 and $499.99 respectively. Regarding the decision to increase prices, Meta explained that "the manufacturing and transportation costs of products have been rising."
However, Tianfeng Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo once tweeted that a more affordable price was once the key competitive advantage of Quest 2 compared to other competitors. Since Meta's VR ecosystem is still not enough to attract users, Quest's price increase may damage the demand for products and the shipments of the hardware supply chain.
On the other hand, most users do not think that using VR social products is their own necessity. "For example, users have established a relatively complete social network on a certain social app and have obtained a better gaming experience on their mobile phones or hosts. Why do they have to switch to VR social networking?" Zhang Yi said.
21 reporter learned from a Quest user that although he has purchased the equipment for a long time, he rarely considers using VR social platforms like Horizon Worlds. "No need, my friends don't even have equipment." He told reporters that watching movies is his main purpose of using Quest at present, and using VR social apps is more like "forcing social needs for yourself." Horizon Worlds, which is unattainable to
, faces difficulties such as the total monthly active users being lower than expected and the continued decline in user retention rate . How are its main competitors VRchat and Rec Room performing in the near future?
Among them, VRchat was launched in 2017. Users can freely upload images and scenes they created using third-party 3D software and customize game modes. The number of users reached 1.5 million a year after the launch. Rec Room was launched earlier, officially launched the Steam platform in 2016, known as the "VR version of Roblox", and received approximately 245 million yuan in financing in 2021, with a valuation of US$3.5 billion.
Based on the specific user activity of these three VR social applications, VRchat can be regarded as the relatively best performer. Steam Charts shows that in the past 30 days, the average daily active users of VRchat was 18,852, which can be estimated that the monthly active users of VRchat can reach about 560,000.
, and Rec Room's data is even worse than Horizon Worlds, with an average daily active users in the past 30 days, and the data has been on the decline for two consecutive months.
(Rec Room user data on the Steam platform)
Judging from the performance of Horizon Worlds and the two competitors, the current size of the meta-universe social application is still an unpredictable distance from the "billions of scales" envisioned by Zuckerberg.
A game industry practitioner with coordinates in Beijing shared his views in an interview with 21 reporters. "In fact, many people have misunderstandings about the metaverse, that is, after solving technical problems such as pictures and functions, the metaverse community can soar. In fact, before completing the technology, you should first consider how to make your 'world' full of people." But he also admitted that it is a contradiction to require users to settle in before there is no formed and stable operation of the metaverse community. A series of companies such as
Meta that are trying to create a real meta-universe platform are still "a long way to go". Zhang Yi pointed out that what Meta needs to think about is that after has carried out the construction of the meta-universe for nearly a year, if the product launched by cannot achieve the company's position as a "social overlord" in the meta-universe and thus finds the second growth curve, what should it do next?
"Obviously, social interaction is not the only product or model that can support the development of the concept of the meta-universe. For Meta, it may only obtain a short buffer time. In terms of monetization capabilities of other modules, Meta still needs to explore longer and more in-depth." He said.
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