Meta, the social networking company, has expanded the services of its flagship metaverse app, Horizon Worlds, to Spain and France. This move is part of Meta’s expansion plan to offer these services to more countries in Europe this year. While the app was only available as a service in 2020, it just opened its services to the general public in December 2021 for the US and Canadian markets.
Meta expands App Horizon worlds in Spain and France
Meta, the social media conglomerate, is expanding its metaverse offering to Europe. The company recently announced the launch of one of its major metaverse apps, Horizon Worlds, in Spain and France. In a post, the company announced that all citizens over the age of 18 in these countries will have the opportunity to enjoy this service using one of the VR headsets sold by the company.
Horizon Worlds allows users to experience a VR world where they are represented by a configurable avatar, and can roam worlds created by other players and experiences developed by companies. This launch in these two countries is part of a move aimed at launching Horizon Worlds in more European countries before 2023.
The app, which has been available to users as an invite-only closed beta since 2020, opened its services to the US and Canada last December and has followed that launch by opening its platform to customers in the UK, Ireland and Iceland this year.
Plans focused on Spain
Spain is a particularly important country for the company, which has decided to invest more than $1 billion to build a giant data center in the Talavera de la Reina region. About this, Javier Olivan, Vice President of Products across Meta and Infrastructure stated:
Spain is at the forefront of European technology. The country benefits from having two strong technical hubs: Barcelona and Madrid. As our company prepares to help build the metaverse, we are putting Spain at the center of our plans.
In addition, a new Meta Workers Hub will also be built in Madrid. Another project is the Metaverse Lab that the company is building in partnership with Telefonica, in order to entice companies to produce products based on the metaverse.
However, the Spanish government has also asked Meta to respect national laws when it comes to processing user data the company collects in its apps. According to local media, Pedro Sanchez, President of Spain, stressed that the data of the Spanish people must remain in Spain and be processed in accordance with local laws.