Meta expands Horizon Worlds to France and Spain

Meta has launched virtual reality (VR) social platform Horizon Worlds in France and Spain, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg who announced the expansion in a Facebook post.

Horizon Worlds has been available for users over 18 years old in the US and Canada since last year, and it was also launched in the UK in June.

In April, it released a web version for people without VR headsets to experience the virtual world service and has since added safety features like controls for voice chat and four-foot personal boundaries around avatars in the platform.

Meta envisions Horizon Worlds will become a virtual space for people to hang out with friends and even shop for in-app goods (possibly a Heineken beer, or a GAP hoodie.) However, these advancements are not expected anytime soon.

Horizon Worlds is one of the VR social apps Meta has created, with the idea that the metaverse will consist of multiple virtual worlds.

Since the company rebranded from Facebook to Meta, it has spent a lot of money on the metaverse and even experienced its first-ever quarterly revenue decline in Q2 2022 because of it.

“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 said at the Q2 2022 quarterly earnings call.