Pokemon Pokopia Sells Out, Horizon Worlds Dies Out
Cozy vs Realistic Art Direction
When it comes to in-game avatars, cute and cozy is underutilized as an aesthetic. Realistic avatars lead to more men and cozy avatars lead to gender parity.
Pokemon Pokopia sold 2.2 million copies in the first four days despite Nintendo going back on their word on gaming key cards. Gaming key cards are physical cartridges without game files and only DRM software. Pokpopia demand is so high that people are willing to accept gaming key cards.
In January 2026, Meta laid off 10% of their Reality Labs division. Meta shut down Horizon Workrooms (a VR collaboration app for work) on February 16, 2026. Meta is expected to layoff an additional 20% of staff and I expect a large number will come from the Reality Labs division.
Meta’s Curse of Combining Things
Meta’s weakness is their tendency to combine things that people prefer to keep separate. I assume Horizon’s avatar art direction was realistic because Meta wanted to overtake Zoom and Google Meet during the covid era as a communication platform.
The problem with this art direction is that it is less popular with female users. The closest comparison to Horizon’s art direction is Fortnite in terms of multiplayer worlds. Below is Fortnite’s estimated gender breakdown.
Let’s compare this with Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
"I think there is probably an image of 'a game where you can live leisurely with cute animals’ and ‘a game for young girls...However, looking at the gender and age data of Animal Crossing users, it is clear that the ratio of males and females is half and there are many users in their 20s and 30s."
Hisashi Nogami, Head Producer of Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Realistic avatars are great when people want excitement from a lack of stimulation in reality. But cute and non realistic avatars of Animal Crossing are more comfortable for long play times and a diversion from a stressful reality.
Pokopia maintains a similar cute and simple aesthetic.
The biggest problem with VR metaverse avatars is art direction. You want an art direction where people can customize but feel comfortable. Make things too realistic and you encounter problems with an uncanny valley. Yet, this is the direction corporations go every time.
We see this with the Apple Vision Pro whose ultra realistic avatars are even worse than Meta’s early avatars and creepy. This is done with some end game of being popular for remote collaborative work. But I believe many companies are better off with a cozy and non realistic aesthetic.
Do I think people prefer lighter things on their heads? Yes! But we’re going to run into the same problems in 2030 even with light weight AR glasses if art direction for base avatars remains the same.