Phil Spencer is not impressed with Meta's attempt at a metaverse.
Xbox's head and Microsoft Gaming's CEO revealed in the latest Wall Street Journal Live that he found the metaverse Meta is creating through its online video game, Horizon Worlds, "a poorly built video game."
Meta's investors have previously expressed their concern about the company's spending towards the metaverse and the company's slow growth rate.
Phil Spencer's Opinion On Meta's Horizon Worlds
Spencer not only said that he found the metaverse Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is developing through Horizon Worlds, a poorly built video game, but he also added that being in it is not how he wants to spend his time, per Tom Warren's tweet.
However, he does admit that it is still in its early stages of development and knows it will evolve eventually.
"Building a metaverse that's like a meeting room, I just find that's not where I want to spend most of my time," Spencer said. "What I see in the metaverse world is that we're at the early stage and this will evolve."
Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus VR in 2012 who soon became a part of Meta's Reality Labs, agrees with Spencer's opinion but in a harsher tone. According to a report from PC Gamer, Luckey likened Horizon Worlds and the metaverse to a "Project car" that Zuckerberg is providing unreasonable amounts of money to develop in the pursuit of his vision.
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He also added that he and most of the game's development team doesn't think Horizon Worlds is a good product as it's not fun and that it is not a good product.
Interestingly, Spencer mentioned that metaverses are already mini-metaverses of their own - virtual 3D spaces to go to and save the world from"invading aliens or conquering castles."
This opinion is something that Herman Narula, CEO of simulation software developer Improbable, agrees with, though only in part. Narula said that video games are "great closed systems of value," and that they'll keep on being fun for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, they described the metaverse as an idea that connects the experiences brought by video games together. However, the resulting product would be significantly less interesting to game companies than sports leagues or fashion brands.
Meta's Continued Losses
Regardless of the opinions of other game developers, it is clear that Meta is losing money due to its development of Horizon Worlds and the metaverse.
According to a report from IGN, Meta lost $3.7 billion, largely due to its VR and XR efforts and metaverse development under its Reality Labs division.
Meta's Reality Labs had seen an increase in operating costs since late April, when Meta reported that the division cost $1.13 billion higher than it had in Oct 2021.
Despite investors' woes, Zuckerberg claimed that he is laying the groundwork for what he expects to be an exciting 2030. However, he admitted that it was expensive for the company to develop and build a web version of Horizon Worlds and creator monetization features in Meta's social VR app as they were something that was never built before.
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