Meta’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Andrew Bosworth, has provided new insights into the company’s decision to discontinue the Move fitness tracking feature for the Quest. Initially, Meta explained that the move was due to the legacy technology behind Move, which hindered their ability to introduce new innovations for Quest users. They also stated that removing the feature would allow them to develop more advanced features for the Quest experience.
However, Bosworth offered a different perspective during a recent “ask me anything” session on Instagram. He explained that while Move had “a small but loyal crowd” of users, the user base was not large enough to justify the costs associated with maintaining and supporting the feature.
“We’ve done this a couple of times recently, and every time we do it, obviously it affects people in the community who relied on it, and that’s unfortunate. I’m sorry about that,” Bosworth said. His comment likely refers to the recent removal of the Scoreboards app on Quest, which allowed users to view their achievements. Meta provided similar reasoning for that removal as well.
This trend of removing core system features points to Meta’s shifting priorities as the company works to transition its VR and mixed reality (MR) business toward profitability.
