spatialcomputing.info

You might have noticed an unfamiliar icon in your app drawer today. Don’t be alarmed, because that’s the new logo for Meta’s XR content store, and it’s setting the stage for more changes yet to come.

Two short years ago, Quest’s content store was simply called ‘Oculus’, making for one of the last holdouts of Oculus branding after Facebook rebranded to Meta in 2021.

The mobile app eventually got the rebrand too, renaming it from ‘Oculus’ to ‘Meta Quest’ in August 2022.

Now, Meta is preparing for another strategic shift as it readies its XR content store for third-party headsets for the first time, renaming its mobile app to ‘Meta Horizon’.

The company announced back in April it plans to open up the Quest operating system to third-party OEMs, including Asus, Lenovo, and Xbox. When, how and what those devices will look like, we just can’t say—although we’re hoping to learn more at Meta’s Connect 2024 dev conference in September.

This comes part and parcel with two superficial changes the company announced back in April: Quest OS is now called ‘Meta Horizon OS’, and the Quest Store is now called the ‘Meta Horizon Store’.

The Quest name isn’t going anywhere though, at least not in the short term. Meta said in April it’s going to continue producing Quest to showcase its hardware and software advancements. This also means the company will effectively be competing against its hardware partners, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions will need to tap into “specific use cases” to best differentiate themselves.