Some of us on the team have made our views clear about the metaverse, but that doesn’t stop the mighty Zuck from moving forward with his machinations. Plans to launch the metaverse, and convince today’s youth to sign up, are finally taking shape… in the form of *checks for bills* a physical store?
The Meta Store is a physical space, situated under a Reality Labs office in Burlingame, California. Great positioning from a logistical point of view, but why not use some of those metaphysical real estate that you’re working so hard on?
In order to encourage offline mass adoption of the far-fetched concepts of ‘customizable avatars’ and ‘3D spaces’ for the more disconnected generations, it seems Meta thought it best to alleviate them with physical test experiments, before putting them in a catheter and selling them an alternative life in VR. After all, these are difficult concepts to understand.
In all honesty though, you can’t expect everyone to go out and buy one of Meta’s four proposed new VR headsets the second they’re released, not without having tried the metaverse for size. It’s money that could be spent on Moonpies and Christmas stockings for the grandkids.
Inside the store, potential Metaheads can try Oculus Quest 2 (sorry, Meta Quest 2…), Ray-Ban Stories, and Portal. No, it’s not Portal as in Valve’s award-winning game, but ‘Meta Portal’. You can familiarize yourself with it, wait for it, make a call “for a retail associate to fully explore its capabilities”. Wow, what a ride.
Meta Portal experiences include Smart Camera, which allows the camera to follow you as you move and can be zoomed in to ensure everyone is in the picture; and Story Time, which uses AR to put you or your kids inside your own video calling fairy tale.
Amazing what technology can do these days, isn’t it?
Martin Gilliard, Head of Meta Store, explains, “Having the store here at Burlingame gives us more opportunities to experiment and keep the customer experience at the heart of our development. What we learn here will help shape our future retail strategy.”
So Meta not only makes it easy for people to experience it, but also encourages them to become a free quality guarantee to improve upcoming products. Smart move on Meta’s part. Spend money on a physical space, save money on testers.