At the Meta Connect convention on Tuesday, the corporate made an enormous deal out of claiming VR has reworked from a solitary to a social and shared expertise. The firm accentuated that in Horizon Worlds, folks play video games, report podcasts, make music, and “roast marshmallows” (that’s an actual quote). And starting subsequent 12 months, of us may also get to hang around in particular experiences round their favourite NBC Universal reveals and flicks, equivalent to The Office.

Vishal Shah, Meta’s vice chairman of metaverse, mentioned the corporate had brokered a multi-year collaboration settlement with NBC Universal to convey its “iconic content to life through experiences in the metaverse.” Besides The Office, experiences will function content material from Universal Monsters, DreamWorks, Blumhouse, Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights, and extra, Shah revealed. In addition, the VP mentioned that the Peacock app was coming to Quest.

According to Shah, followers will get to hang around in these digital areas in Horizon Worlds and at Universal Studios. The NBC Universal experiences will likely be co-created by Meta and the media firm.

“Fans will be able to engage in these experiences in Horizon Worlds, at Universal Studios theme parks, and customize their avatars,” Shah mentioned.

Assuming the experiences at Universal theme parks use communal headsets, I’d really feel a bit icky utilizing headsets an entire lot of different folks have used. It’s one thing you’re placing in your face. At the identical time, I’m simply not going to lug a private Quest headset round a theme park.

What does all this imply? Likely, that Meta is hoping to entice extra of us into Horizon Worlds by dangling their favourite content material in entrance of them like a carrot. Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s CTO who can also be main Reality Labs, appeared to verify this, saying that the corporate wished to construct out Horizon Worlds because the next-generation social platform, the place the reference to others occurs “in real-time.” Shah agreed.

“It always comes back to wanting to feel connected, and if we really want the metaverse to feel social, we need to open these worlds and experiences to everyone,” the metaverse VP mentioned.

On the opposite hand, I can’t wait to get my very own model of Shrek’s swamp, so I can yell at folks to get out of it!