Mark Zuckerberg’s dream of building a virtual world — a metaverse where people share virtual reality experiences through their Meta Quest headsets — looks to be dying. Meta is shutting down the virtual reality space, Horizon Worlds, after burning through billions of dollars and years of research. So, is Samsung’s Galaxy XR headset doomed?
Not really. And if it is, the death of Horizon Worlds isn’t the reason. Zuckerberg kept Horizon Worlds locked to the Quest ecosystem, so it was never part of the Galaxy XR equation to begin with. Its shutdown won’t affect other VR/AR platforms, at least not directly.
But to my eyes, this shutdown might signal something bigger. That despite billions of dollars and years of research spent, the big VR dream of creating a parallel world was and still is far from materializing.
Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Outside a small circle of tech idealists that includes Zuckerberg himself, most VR users never seemed sold on the metaverse — especially one framed as the next version of the internet where Meta could take a cut of your digital transactions.
Meta’s recent decision feels like a broader reality check. Personally, I am now more convinced than ever that no one — not even the companies building VR hardware — seems to have figured out what VR is actually for. And I’m gonna take a wild guess and say most Meta Quest users sure weren’t keeping their headsets plugged in for the sake of Horizon Worlds.
Zuckerberg went almost all-in on the metaverse, only for it to fizzle out just as AI became the tech sphere’s new obsession. And speaking of AI, the fact that the Galaxy XR isn’t just a Meta Quest clone but an AI-driven experience (at least in part) might be its saving grace. At least, for now.
Samsung and Google designed Galaxy XR not for the metaverse first but to combine VR/AR and AI in a manner that enhances, or augments, reality rather than replacing it.
Of course, Galaxy XR has full VR capabilities just like the Meta Quest, and it could technically promote its own VR world, if such a thing existed. But it thankfully doesn’t, and most Samsung Galaxy XR tech demos are still more rooted in reality than Horizon Worlds.
With the latter gone, I doubt Samsung will try to create a Horizon Worlds alternative for Galaxy XR anytime soon. Arguably, Galaxy XR promotes another type of use case where all the best gadgets in your home don’t actually exist physically but are augmented reality objects projected straight to your eyeballs. That’s arguably a different kind of dystopia, if you will, than the one Horizon Worlds promoted.
I do like to think Samsung and Google saw where things were heading for Horizon Worlds and pivoted early. The industry moved on to AI. Meta didn’t, until now. And yes, Meta says Horizon Worlds is going to the chopping block partly because the company wants to redirect resources toward mobile experiences and AI. Thankfully for Samsung, the company is already way ahead in the mobile and AI categories.
