Meta launches Pocket, an app for making games with generative AI
Summary
The company shut down multiple game companies earlier this year but is now jumping further into the world of AI-created games.
If there isn’t enough AI-generated nonsense in the world, Meta is determined to make sure there’s a bit more. The company recently released Pocket on the Google Play Store, an app that lets users share small programs and games they created with generative AI.
“Pocket is a creative platform for making and sharing gizmos,” the store description reads. “A gizmo is a small interactive thing you can tap and play with… and you can make a gizmo just by describing it.”
The app comes after Meta acquired Atma Science Inc., an AI startup founded by ex-Snapchat staff, earlier this year. Atma Science is behind the viral app Gizmo, which, like Pocket, lets users create interactive, touch-enabled games and mini-apps by typing into a prompt. It also features a TikTok-like feed that lets users play with others’ Gizmos while leaving likes or comments. The Gizmo app is still up on the Apple and Google Play stores, with 14 thousand ratings on the former and over 10 thousand downloads on the latter. As for Meta's version of the app, Pocket appears to be available only on the Google Play Store at the moment.
Meta's Quest 3 VR headset
Image: Meta
Before this push into AI games with Pocket, Meta made large-scale layoffs at several of its video game studios. A few months ago, Meta cut jobs at Reality Labs (formerly Oculus VR), including Oculus Studios, which develops VR and AR games and content.
Oculus Studios previously acquired Armature Studio (the team behind the acclaimed Quest 2 VR port of Resident Evil 4), Twisted Pixel (which created ‘Splosion Man and Marvel’s Deadpool VR), and Sanzaru Games (the studio behind two of the best-reviewed VR games of all time, Asgard’s Wrath and its sequel), before closing all of them in January 2026. It previously shut down Ready at Dawn, which made God of War: Chains of Olympus, The Order 1886, Lone Echo, and many more, as well as Downpour Interactive (Onward).
Meta’s Reality Labs has incurred more than $70 billion in losses since 2020. The company still owns Camouflaj (Iron Man VR, Batman: Arkham Shadow), Beat Games (Beat Saber), and more, but given its backpedaling on VR and (non-AI-generated) games, the futures of these studios are up in the air.
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