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Users of Supernatural<\/a> got an unpleasant surprise this week: Meta has pulled the plug on its flagship virtual reality fitness app. Citing “organizational changes,” Meta says it will no longer release new content or update features for Supernatural. <\/p>\n The app is not shutting down completely however. Subscribers can still access Supernatural’s existing library of Beat Saber-workouts, and Meta says it will maintain the platform and Facebook page, but no new workouts, features, or other content is planned.<\/p>\n Both users and critics have nearly universally praised Supernatural\u2014CNet scored it 9 out of 10<\/a>, it won both Fast Company’s Best App award<\/a> in 2020 and a Webby in 2023<\/a>, and boasted celebrity tie-ins with Jane Fonda and Bon Jovi. Meta doesn’t publish subscriber numbers for Supernatural, but there are over 110,000 members of Supernatural’s Facebook community<\/a>. Not enough, apparently, to warrant keeping the app going.<\/p>\n In 2021, Meta spent an estimated $400 million to purchase Within,<\/a> Supernatural’s developer, even battling the FTC to make the deal, and the app was a heavily promoted part of the company’s overall “Metaverse” strategy. <\/p>\n What do you think so far?<\/p>\n The shuttering of Supernatural is part of a larger shift at Meta. This week, the company laid off 1,500 people\u2014about 10% of the staff\u2014from Reality Labs, Meta’s hardware and virtual reality division. \u201cWe said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward Wearables. This is part of that effort,\u201d a Meta spokesman told The Wall Street Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Along with cuts at Supernatural, Meta is closing three studios behind some of the most prominent, high-end VR games: Armature, who brought Resident Evil 4<\/a> to VR, Sanzaru, the studio behind Asgard\u2019s Wrath<\/a>, and Twisted Pixel, creators of Deadpool VR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We may earn a commission from links on this page. Users of Supernatural got an unpleasant surprise this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4322],"tags":[1630,105,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-698812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-fitness","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115902087511074093","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}