Meta is expanding its virtual world to more countries. This time, the company announced the arrival of its Horizon Worlds application to users in Spain and France. With this, there are already five nations where Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse is available, including the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
The announcement was made through his Facebook account with a photo of his avatar and a metaversal reproduction of the Eiffel Tower and the Sagrada Familia behind, where he also highlighted that they are working to add more countries where their virtual reality social platform is. enabled.
What is Horizon Worlds?
Horizon Worlds is a free app developed by Meta that works like a virtual reality playground. By entering, currently from Virtual Reality glasses, it is possible to play, attend events or just hang out with friends in experiences created by Meta or by the user community.
This is one of the most important initiatives of the technology to build the vision it has regarding the metaverse, because it can become a place where people spend their time and even spend money being inside this virtual world.
“If you just imagine some future metaverse at some point, clearly the ability to sell virtual goods and be able to take them with you from one world to another is going to be a big part of it,” Zuckerberg said in an interview last April, where he announced the purchase feature.
Among the items that could be purchased were fashion items for the avatar or secret sections to the world. In addition, the company has also started testing a bonus program for creators in Horizon Worlds. “The monetization of creators is really important, because everyone should be able to support themselves and make a living building these amazing experiences,” Zuckerberg said.
How much money has Meta spent building his metaverse?
The intention of creating a metaverse is complex and expensive. In April, Zuckerberg pointed out that the company had lost 3,000 million dollars due to this objective and although in 2022 they did not expect growth, he pointed to 2030 as the year in which his virtual world materializes.
“Obviously, this is a very expensive undertaking in the next few years. But as the metaverse becomes more important in every part of how we live from our social platforms, to entertainment, to work, to education, to commerce, I trust we’ll be glad we played a big part in building this. ”, admitted Zuckerberg after the report of the second quarter.
According to figures reported by Meta, if the metaverse evolves to the same extent as it has been doing, it would have a 5% contribution to Latin America’s GDP by 2031, that is, 320,000 million dollars, while globally its impact would be 8.2% of GDP.
Horizon Worlds had more than 300,000 monthly users until February of this year, so the company is also interested in developing a web version of its application, with the purpose of giving access to the metaverse to people who do not have devices. of VR.
Although a web version is contrary to Zuckerberg’s idea that the metaverse will be a “successor to the mobile internet”, Meta develops this idea to be an inclusive space from its origin, said Maxine Williams, vice president of diversity at Meta, in an interview with Expansión.
