Facebook, also known as Meta, is so eager to own its own computing platform that it is licensing its VR headset software to computer manufacturers. It’s a stroke of genius.
Why Meta Partners with Microsoft to Improve Virtual Reality
Meta has already licensed its Horizon OS to Asus and Lenovo, and it’s also pushing alternative app stores on its platform. It’s also working on tools that will allow game makers to port their apps, incorporating Meta’s weird metaverse that still doesn’t interest many people. These deals are still in the early stages, and the specifics of the licensing agreement are still under wraps, but the details we do have suggest that Meta is aiming to be, as The Verge’s Alex Heath put it, “the Microsoft of headsets.”
“An open approach to Horizon OS allows the company to focus on shaping a VR ecosystem that is so compelling that it quickly builds a user base that cannot be copied by a second player later, and to quickly reduce its dependence on Apple and Google, who control access to mobile users and can and sometimes have held the company to their own rules,” Varun Garde, director of Cloud Marketing – Monetization and Business Planning at Microsoft, told Lifewire via email.
Mark Zuckerberg desperately wants Meta to own a computing platform. How else do you explain the billions of dollars wasted building VR and the metaverse, the 3D world that Meta cared about so much it changed its company name?
