Zuckerberg Swears Meta’s Premier App Doesn’t Look Like a Wii Game

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants everyone to know that his $451 billion company’s premier metaverse app, Horizon Worlds, doesn’t actually look like a game developed for the Wii.

Zuckerberg shared(Opens in a new window) a screenshot celebrating Horizon Worlds’ expansion to France and Spain on Aug. 16. “Looking forward to seeing people explore and build immersive worlds,” he said in a Facebook post about the announcement, “and to bringing this to more countries soon.”

The post drummed up plenty of attention for Horizon Worlds—but not in the way Zuckerberg probably hoped. People immediately criticized the graphics featured in the screenshot:

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Second Life, an online social platform similar in concept to Horizon Worlds that was released in 2003, even seemed to get in on the action:

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This continued until Zuckerberg shared(Opens in a new window) a followup post on Aug. 19 in which he said “major updates to Horizon and avatar graphics coming soon” and that “the graphics in Horizon are capable of much more — even on headsets — and Horizon is improving very quickly.”

The post was accompanied by these images of a much higher quality avatar and background:

(Mark Zuckerberg)

There’s a stark contrast in graphics quality between Zuckerberg’s two posts. But he combined two defenses—that Horizon Worlds’ graphics will be improved and that his original screenshot wasn’t meant to showcase the game’s visual appeal—in the process.

The screenshots, promotional images, and videos featured on the Horizon Worlds(Opens in a new window) page on the Oculus website suggest the game’s current graphics are much closer to Zuckerberg’s first screenshot than his second. How long will it take for that not to be the case?

Zuckerberg said he’ll share more information about upcoming changes to Horizon Worlds at the Connect conference. Meta still hasn’t announced when that conference will be held, however, beyond saying in April(Opens in a new window) that it planned to host the annual event “later this year.”