Meta is launching Horizon Worlds in France and Spain on Tuesday, Aug. 16, to expand its social platform for virtual reality.
France and Spain join Horizon Worlds' three existing markets: Canada, the UK, and the US, where virtual reality is already available.
Meta Expands Horizon Worlds
In a Facebook post, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch with a photo and noted that it plans to expand the platform to more countries in the future.
Meta launched Horizon Worlds for all users above 18 years of age in Canada and the US in 2021 and made the platform available for users in the UK in June.
In April, Meta said it is working on a web version to let people experience virtual worlds without owning a VR headset.
Over the last couple of months, the company has also added safety features like controls for voice chat and personal boundaries around avatars in the VR platform, according to TechCrunch.
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Horizon Worlds is just one of the VR social apps offered by the tech giant, which has a vision of building a metaverse consisting of many such virtual worlds.
The company expects that users will spend more time hanging out with their friends in these virtual worlds and even spend money on in-app goods. But the tech giant is still very far away from achieving any of this.
Since it is rebranding from Facebook to Meta, the tech giant has poured a lot of money into building the metaverse in the last couple of quarters.
The firm experienced its first-ever quarterly revenue decline in Q2 2022 but has been confident that its metaverse plans are paying off.
In February, Meta said that the Horizon World app had more than 300,000 monthly users, according to Business Traverse.
Zuckerberg said during the quarterly earnings call for Q2 2022 that expanding the metaverse is an expensive undertaking, and they will have to gamble on it for the next several years.
Zuckerberg added that he is confident that they will be "glad that they played an important role in building the metaverse" as it becomes "more important in every part of how we live from social platforms."
In April, the Meta CEO said that the company lost $3 billion because of metaverse-building, but he was hopeful that it would come to fruition by 2030.
Meta's Future Plans
Zuckerberg revealed that the revenue from Meta's apps, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger, is helping fund the company's projects in virtual reality, which he said is the tech giant's future.
This is despite the company constantly losing money over its plan. In Q1 2022, Meta's Reality Labs operated at a loss of $2.96 billion, and in 2021, Reality Labs lost over $10 billion, according to Variety.
Zuckerberg said that it is not until the products are released to the market that it ends up becoming bit and provides revenue or profit to the business.
The Meta CEO added that the metaverse lays the groundwork for where the company will be by 2030.
Related Article: Meta 'Horizon Worlds' to Bring 'Voice Mode,' Controls for Users to Have a Safer Experience
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Sophie Webster
