Buried beneath Meta’s Horizon Worlds mobile pivot is a quietly confident message about VR: they’re not going anywhere. I guess they would say that, though.
No new hardware in 2025. But Meta had a holiday season on par with 2024. In-app purchases up 13%. And 86% of time spent in Quest headsets goes to third-party apps.
Wu Xu put it well: “Meta is willing to put real internal numbers on the record to make one point: the Quest ecosystem is already sustainable on its own.”
That’s a bigger deal than it sounds. Meta is essentially telling developers: you built this, and we’re betting on you to keep building it. I remain quietly hopeful, though skeptical of the reality.
Horizon Worlds is being separated from the Quest Store, which will be a Very Good Thing. It should mean more visibility for VR apps. Meta put nearly $150 million into VR developer programs in 2025 alone.
Xu also made a point I keep coming back to: even in slower years, a breakout hit emerges. Gorilla Tag. I Am Cat. UG. Something will break out in 2026 too.
Meta isn’t promising a miracle. But sustained investment and a platform increasingly built around third-party developers? That’s the most useful thing they could have said right now.
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