Now Meta has decided to extend this into their wholly owned company, Oculus. Recently, Meta’s social media accounts started the rebranding process with mems and statements like “New Name. Same Mission”. Of course, what that mission is remains to be seen as the Old Oculus slowly goes away to be consumed by the Borg-Like controls of Meta. People are rightly concerned about their expensive VR headset. The Meta Quest Twitter account also posted the ominous sounding “We’re hoping to make our ambitions to help build the metaverse more clear with our new name!”
So the Oculus Quest is dead, long live the Oculus Quest. Meta Quest, besides being a goofy name, is now part of the path forward to the Metaverse. Facebook/Meta’s ambition to build a whole virtual reality world where people can pretty much exist. The thought and concept bring cool visions of Ready Player One, but also 12 Monkeys and many other dystopia realities (including some dark parts of Ready Player One). Meta seems to think the future is bright, and there are going to be people that will dive into the metaverse headfirst. However, I happen to think that there is a rapidly growing population of people that no longer trust the Facebook as more and more of their social experiments and data collection efforts come to light.
The Quest and Quest 2 may still be a great way to play and have fun in a VR world, but for how much longer? When will Meta require you to be part of the Metaverse to simply play the games you have bought? I think once that day comes Meta will face some significant backlash from the market. If history has shown us anything, it is that tightly controlled ecosystems never last. Meta and their metaverse ambitions will be no different.
