Very few people have had anything positive to say about Facebook's metaverse. You can now add Xbox's Phil Spencer to the long list of people with less-than-glowing things to say about Meta's venture as he labeled it a “poorly built video game”.
Spencer spoke at the WSJ Tech Live conference this week (via The Verge) and was asked for his opinion on Facebook's metaverse. Spencer expanded on his poorly built video game comments by praising other developers for creating worlds players want to escape into, and what Facebook has built so far just isn't that. “Video game creators have an amazing ability to build compelling worlds that we want to go spend time in,” Spencer said.
“Building a metaverse that looks like a meeting room... I just find that’s not where I want to spend most of my time.” Facebook's metaverse took quite the hammering at the conference this week as Spencer was far from the only one to take a shot at what Mark Zuckerberg has been building. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel likened the experience to living inside a computer, noting that's the last thing he wants to do after work, while Apple SVP Greg Joswiak simply said it was something he will never use.
Spencer did double back somewhat to make sure he wasn't only tearing apart what Facebook has achieved through its platform so far. He added that the metaverse is still a very young concept, adding that in the future it will “end up looking a lot more like video games than some of the models that I see for the metaverse today.”
Odds are much like this article, whenever you've heard something about Facebook's metaverse and its Horizon Worlds game, it's been bad news. Whether it be launching the game in Spain without the ability to play it in Spanish, Zuckerberg's in-game likeness being memed to the max, or Meta employees admitting that even they don't play the game, it's a minor miracle that Facebook's metaverse even still exists at this point.