Facebook Is Killing Oculus

Facebook, which as we speak modified its identify to Meta only for enjoyable, is making adjustments to its digital actuality division to match its rebrand. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth introduced that the corporate would transition away from the Oculus branding starting in 2022.

“We all have a strong attachment to the Oculus brand, and this was a very difficult decision to make,” Bosworth wrote in a Facebook put up. “While we’re retiring the name, I can assure you that the original Oculus vision remains deeply embedded in how Meta will continue to drive mass adoption for VR today.”

The Quest digital actuality headset isn’t truly going anyplace. Its identify is altering to Meta Quest, and Facebook Reality Labs is being rebranded Reality Labs, Meta’s VR/AR division. The Oculus app will even be rebranded to Meta Quest. Facebook’s Portal division is getting the identical therapy and can now be referred to as the Meta Portal. Rolls off the tongue, no?

But the identify change isn’t all utterly bizarre. Facebook is ditching the requirement to have a Facebook account to make use of Oculus, which is the least the corporate may do. It stays one of many main ache factors of shopping for the $300 digital actuality headset.

Facebook will dangle onto the Horizon branding for its socially-focused digital actuality experiences with the transition to Meta. Meta Horizon will embody apps like Horizon Workrooms, Horizon Worlds, Horizon Friends, and Horizon Profiles.

Meta is now the umbrella for all Facebook’s merchandise. But the identify change appears extra doubtless as a result of headlines surrounding the Facebook model. After all, it’s exhausting to belief an organization to take you to the metaverse if it’s additionally a platform for horrific occasions to be live-streamed as they’re taking place. If the Facebook Papers have taught us something this weke, it’s that Facebook is aware of it has a picture downside, even when it’s not fairly positive the best way to remedy it.

Dropping the Oculus model is a child step in direction of separating Facebook’s digital actuality {hardware} and software program divisions from the divisive social community. But we’ll have to attend and see if it’ll be sufficient to persuade non-Facebook customers to step into the metaverse.