Meta opens up its ecosystem to other hardware manufacturers
Yesterday was a crucial day for the VR ecosystem because Meta announced a big change in its strategy. After having been a walled garden for years, it has opened up its ecosystem.
The first decision in this sense has been opening up its software layer to other VR OEMs. The Quest operating system, store, companion app, and social layer have all been rebranded from Meta Quest to Meta Horizon (e.g. the Meta Quest Store is now called Meta Horizon Store) and have been made available to selected partners. The only constraint for the headsets based on Horizon OS is that they must implement Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets. The first partners onboard are Lenovo and ASUS, which are building headsets for specific purposes (ASUS about gaming, Lenovo about productivity) that will run Meta Horizon runtime. There will also be a partnership with Microsoft about a special Xbox-themed Meta Quest. Meta has stated it will keep manufacturing Meta Quest headsets, but besides them, there will also be other headsets made by third parties running Meta Horizon OS and Meta Horizon Store.
I think Meta made an amazing decision for three different reasons:
- I’m all in for open software, and seeing Meta opening up its ecosystem is great news
- The real money in VR is with software: Meta is selling its headsets at cost or under cost, and only makes a profit with content. If more headsets are running its store, it will sell more content and make more money
- Meta is making this announcement a few days before the Google I/O event, where Google most likely would have announced its Android XR operating system. By playing in anticipation, Meta is instead proposing itself as the Android of XR and putting in trouble Google, which is new in the field, so it has a less ripe OS and less rich content store to offer to OEMs.
Besides this bombshell news, Meta has also taken another good decision: it has started blurring the lines between App Lab and the official Meta Horizon Store (i.e. the Quest Store). The games on App Lab will appear in a dedicated tab of the Horizon Store, finally getting some visibility and discoverability. This is a great step forward for a lot of small VR titles, and finally a recognition of the importance of indie VR games.
