ADRIAN HON

Notes from videogaming’s borders

Even though my Meta Quest 2 sits not two metres from me, I can never quite summon up the will to boot it up

Back in October, an internal memo from Meta’s VP of Metaverse, Vishal Shah, complained that the employees building the company’s flagship virtual reality social network, Horizon Worlds, weren’t using it enough. Shah’s memo, obtained by The Verge, asked plaintively, “Why don’t we love the product we’ve built so much that we use it all the time? The simple truth is, if we don’t love it, how can we expect our users to love it?” Later, he commanded that “everyone in this organisation should make it their mission to fall in love with Horizon Worlds”.

The problem with Horizon Worlds is the same problem that bedevils all virtual reality games and applications: they’re too inconvenient to use. I’ve been meaning to write a column about VR for months, for which I bought a brace of intriguing games. Yet even though my Meta Quest 2 headset sits not two metres away from my desk, I can never quite summon up the will to boot it up.

I realise this makes me sound incredibly lazy, but it’s useful to consider why I have no such problems trying out new games on my Steam Deck or Switch or PS5. First off, the Quest 2’s battery is invariably flat, despite its Elite Strap, which doubles its capacity. This is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy since I’d obviously charge it more if I used it more, but this is not a problem I face with my phone or Switch, which get charged every day without fail.