With 'Horizon Worlds' Described As 'Empty, Sad' Wasteland, Meta Seeks Buyers In Corporate Sphere

Story after story keeps dropping about how Meta's VR experiment Horizon Worlds is reportedly an empty, legless wasteland outclassed by 20-year-old video games that even its own employees have little interest in using, which means there's only one consumer base for the company to target — corporations.

One of the challenges Meta and Mark Zuckerberg have faced as they desperately attempt to make the metaverse a "thing" is that few seem to actually want the metaverse to be a "thing."

In an infamous leaked memo to Meta employees, Meta’s VP of Metaverse, Vishal Shah, chastised employees for not spending their days in the reportedly buggy, dreary virtual ghost down because, as he wrote, "We are working on a product that has not found product market fit."

With the rather pressing issue of having a billion-dollar product that nobody seems to want, some critics believe that Meta has begun pitching itself to corporations via their "Meta Quest Pro," a $1,500 VR headset that Meta thinks will be a hit among working professionals. The Meta Quest Pro will be able to run exciting programs like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel while tracking users' eyes and expressions, which Meta says will help them better recreate expressions on users' digital avatars.

This is Immersed VR, on Meta Quest Pro.

Apple’s headset will have a far more polished version of this.

You look at your Mac, virtual windows appear around it. Move your mouse, it floats off screen and between the windows. Works like magic, zero setup.pic.twitter.com/qTtOhLVeZx

— Andrew Hart (@AndrewHartAR) October 17, 2022

According to Meta, this work-focused VR experience will help solve the neck problems that can come with looking at a computer screen and down at a phone, though some critics have noted that wearing a hefty console on one's head will likely not do one's neck any favors.

The push to get corporations to buy into an experimental technology after the public has shown little interest in it is not unheard of. Recently, Google attempted that with its flagging Stadia, attempting to rebrand Stadia as a B2B service months before Stadia shut down for good.