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A couple of weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook Inc, announced a name change of his famous brand to Meta. Meta is Zuckerberg’s stab at creating what is known as the Metaverse, a digitized world that is entirely online. In Zuckerberg’s view, Facebook is well equipped to develop its Metaverse and lead the world towards fully immersive online experiences. Meta has the social media and community infrastructure required to populate the Metaverse and the gaming technology to build it in its Oculus technology.
In 2014, Facebook bought Oculus, a technology company that develops and produces virtual reality technology. Before, Oculus’s acquisition, the company was doing well for itself, with both its Oculus Rift and Quest product lines receiving critical acclaim and high sales. In 2014, when the social media giant bought the company, it raised a few eyebrows. Why would a social media company invest in virtual reality? How would it benefit from such an acquisition? These were the types of questions we asked ourselves, but now they have been answered. Facebook bought Oculus to build its Metaverse.
After Facebook’s rebrand, Oculus is now a division of what is known as Meta platforms. Oculus is the perfect company for Meta to help bring its Metaverse to life. Oculus has the VR technology to take Meta far beyond traditional gaming and virtual reality experiences, immersing players in virtual experiences we have not seen before. Whether that be work-life experiences through virtual workspaces and areas, or video games, Oculus will pave the way for Meta.
In the future, as Oculus technology gets more refined through future iterations of the Oculus Quest and Rift headsets, games will become more immersive. Video games like Beat Sabre and Superhot, which are already technically impressive, will pale compared to what is coming. Meta, helped by Oculus technology, will realize the birth of fully immersive virtual games that do not suffer from latency issues and other tech problems like screen tearing that plague the VR headsets of today. As a result, Oculus technology will be at the forefront of Metaverse innovation, creating virtual games that are groundbreaking and not like anything we have ever seen before. It is an exciting time to be a gamer, and there’s no wonder why.
Thus, Facebook has been incredibly strategic in its acquisitions, say what you will about Facebook and its leader. You can’t fault Zukerberg for being ahead of his time in realizing the future of digital immersion, the Metaverse is coming, and he knows it. These Acquisitions have put Meta in the perfect position to build out a Metaverse; more specifically, the Oculus acquisition is the ideal strategic purchase to ensure Facebook is a market leader in Metaverse technology.
Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how Oculus and Meta will work together to build a Metaverse. We have already seen the gradual convergence of the Facebook platform and the Occulus headsets, with mandatory Facebook accounts needed to use the headset. Still, we haven’t seen how Occulus, Facebook and other Meta platforms like Instagram will properly work with Occulus technology to ensure a fully functioning Metaverse. Thus, so far, Occulus has been largely left to do what it wants.
As we get closer to the Metaverse, we will see a further convergence of Meta platforms. We know Oculus technology will enhance gaming and push it to the next level, but we do not understand how Meta will seek the impossible and bring everything together seamlessly. Thus, it will be interesting to see how Zuckerberg will guide Meta across the choppy waters of innovation and ensure all its subsidiaries work together. Regardless, Meta is in the perfect position to do so due to its Oculus acquisition. It will also be interesting to see whether other VR brands will compete with Oculus in the Metaverse. We see headsets like PlayStation VR, and the HTC Vive take a backseat to Oculus over the last few years. With the rumoured PlayStation VR 2 headset and other iterations of virtual reality from competitors, Oculus will have competition soon. Still, it’s unclear whether they will compete in the Metaverse arena.
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