Dec 17, 2025

Shorten Time-to-First-Dollar with Meta Horizon Launch Tools

Launching an app on the Meta Horizon Store is multi-faceted; it doesn’t just start on the day of publish. In fact, what you do prior to shipping your app on the Meta Horizon Store is more important than ever, and it demands a strategic launch that’ll help you stand out.

A strong pre-launch makes titles easily discoverable before Day 0 and helps sustain momentum afterward. When discoverability is treated as an afterthought, developers tend to face an uphill battle for visibility post-launch.

That’s why we’re excited to highlight our new video-enabled educational playbook, designed to help you think about different pre-launch strategies while you're still building and show how to generate anticipation, gather feedback, and drive early adoption. Below, we highlight each launch feature you can leverage, along with a recommended “Golden Path” sequence for effective pre-launch strategies to help you cut your time-to-first dollar. You’ll also get to hear from some other developers who have had success launching with these tools.

Let’s dive in.

Launch Features: Your Toolkit for a Strong Debut

Meta provides a suite of launch features to help you maximize your app’s visibility and success. Here’s how you can leverage each tool:

Playtesting: Gather early feedback while you’re still building

Playtesting gives you a private space to gather feedback from real users. It’s your chance to validate gameplay, comfort, and performance early so you can refine with confidence. You can think of it as a small, closed test (more like micro-beta) that gives you a read on user preferences, validates core mechanics, and surfaces issues that only show up in the wild.

Pro Tip: Start playtesting as early as possible—even before your app is polished. Respond to written reviews to build trust and show you’re listening to your community.

By carefully limiting access during early playtesting for UG, we were able to validate game mechanics, iterate on in-app purchase pricing, and fine-tune the experience to hit our target session length and other critical metrics. That data directly informed our go-to-market strategy. Ultimately, it’s not about whether the studio loves the game; it’s about whether players do. Testing early and often made all the difference.

Spencer Cook, CEO, Continuum

Trusted testers are worth their weight in gold. I’ve seen time and time again the power of having five to ten highly-engaged players playing directly with the developers, and I’d take this over a disparate group of thousands of players any day. The earlier this happens, the better the chances of launch success because our development decisions are grounded in real behaviour and not our own assumptions about what players want.

Kyle Joyce, CEO, Enver Studio (Scary Baboon)

Coming Soon Pages: Generate anticipation within 180 days of launch

Building out a coming soon page lets you showcase your app up to 180 days before launch to help build excitement and provide users with an opportunity to wishlist your title. Keep in mind that a coming soon page is best for capturing interest, not creating it. Most visibility and growth will come from your own marketing efforts off-platform, like social posts, trailers, and community engagement.

Pro Tip: A/B test your store assets (key art, trailer, description) to see what resonates with your audience.

The single biggest determinant of a game’s success is pre-marketing. Whether that’s on socials, or Coming Soon pages, you need to be able to drive your community to take an action like signing up for email alerts or a Discord community.

Kyle Joyce, CEO, Enver Studio (Scary Baboon)

Across titles like Starship Troopers VR, Hitman 3 VR, and BEATABLE, the Coming Soon page helped us inform our community and influencers early while capturing wishlists. It’s become a key tool for building awareness and demand well before launch.

XR Games

Pre-orders: Secure early sales within 90 days of launch

Pre-orders enable users to purchase paid apps up to 90 days before launch, while providing developers with a convenient way to convert interest into committed downloads and generate revenue before release. You’ll need a price, description, and marketing assets to set up pre-orders.

Offering pre-orders for Hitman 3 VR: Reloaded significantly increased launch-day sales by concentrating demand and excitement ahead of release. It gave us a much stronger day-one performance than previous launches.

XR Games

Early Access: An open beta for ongoing refinement

Launching your app with an Early Access label tells users that it’s still in development, but it also enables you to reach a broader audience, gather real feedback, and allow space to continue refining your app pre and post-launch.

Apps best suited for Early Access are stable and enjoyable, but not fully polished. Remember, this is still your only chance to make a first impression, so consider carefully whether your app is ready for an audience. This feature can be especially beneficial for free-to-play (F2P) apps, where lowering the barrier to entry helps you reach more players and build momentum. And since the app is free, users tend to be more forgiving in their reviews. If you utilize the Early Access label, it is your responsibility to communicate what it means to your users.

Pro Tip: Once you remove the Early Access label, it’s permanent—plan your transition carefully.

Early access let us grow a passionate community while we were still shaping the game. Their feedback sharpened our priorities and their enthusiasm created a foundation for us to build around.

Johnny Wing, General Manager, Orion Drift

Early access is fundamental to community building and game success. Of course it helps surface critical bugs early on but more importantly it creates a core group of highly invested players. The Quest Store thrives on the network effect. Players want to be the first to discover a game and be the one to recommend it to their friends and take a massive pride in discovering something early.

Kyle Joyce, CEO, Enver Studio (Scary Baboon)

Early access for BEATABLE was critical in building a passionate community before launch. It created early advocates who helped amplify the game organically the moment we went live.

XR Games

The Golden Path: Putting it all together for a recommended launch sequence

The Golden Path launch sequence can set you up for maximum exposure, interest, and conversions.

Using each of these features we’ve covered today sequentially can put you on the path to build an audience early, sustain momentum, and set your app up for a strong debut. In the graphic above, you can see a recommended cadence on when to start leveraging each feature. Remember, this is just a recommendation; you can define your own strategy and determine what makes the most sense for your title.

Meta has created flexible launch paths that let developers choose what best fits their game. For UG, Early Access was the perfect way to set expectations around polish, bugs, and our roadmap toward a full future launch. It invited players to join us early, get excited about the vision, and actively influence what UG is becoming. This approach let us build hand-in-hand with our community and even helped spark a wave of user-generated content as players documented the game’s growth from its earliest days.

Spencer Cook, CEO, Continuum

Incentivization and Best Practices

Know your audience: We’ve broken down key audience behaviors and motivations that can help you plan effective content and marketing strategies for your VR apps.

Reward early adopters: Offer exclusive content, discounts, or early access perks to wishlisters and pre-order customers.

Leverage off-platform marketing: Most momentum comes from your own efforts—use social media, communities, and events to drive awareness.

Communicate clearly: Use Developer Posts and direct messaging on platforms such as Discord to keep your audience engaged and informed.

Measure and optimize: Use integrated analytics to track what’s working and adjust your strategy in real time.

Ready to launch? Start building momentum today

Don’t let your launch be just another date on the calendar. Utilize launch features and our new resource guide to build momentum, engage your community, and set your app up for lasting success.

For more tips and developer updates, check out the Meta Horizon OS release notes, subscribe to our monthly newsletter, and follow us on X and Facebook.

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