India, March 19 -- When Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook to Meta in 2021, he pitched the metaverse as the company's future - calling it "the next frontier" and saying he wanted to anchor the company's identity to the metaverse. Less than five years later, the virtual world at the centre of Meta's ambitious gamble is on the verge of shutting down.

Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are scaling back their metaverse ambitions - the company announced in a blog post yesterday that the Horizon Worlds app will be removed from the Quest store at the end of March, and fully removed from VR on June 15. After that, it will only be available on a standalone mobile app.

"We are separating the two platforms so each can grow with greater focus, and the Horizo...