You might have noticed an unfamiliar icon in your app drawer today. Don’t be alarmed, because that’s the new logo for Meta’s XR content store, and it’s setting the stage for more changes yet to come.

Two short years ago, Quest’s content store was simply called ‘Oculus’, making for one of the last holdouts of Oculus branding after Facebook rebranded to Meta in 2021.

The mobile app eventually got the rebrand too, renaming it from ‘Oculus’ to ‘Meta Quest’ in August 2022.

Image courtesy Google

Now, Meta is preparing for another strategic shift as it readies its XR content store for third-party headsets for the first time, renaming its mobile app to ‘Meta Horizon’.

The company announced back in April it plans to open up the Quest operating system to third-party OEMs, including Asus, Lenovo, and Xbox. When, how and what those devices will look like, we just can’t say—although we’re hoping to learn more at Meta’s Connect 2024 dev conference in September.

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This comes part and parcel with two superficial changes the company announced back in April: Quest OS is now called ‘Meta Horizon OS’, and the Quest Store is now called the ‘Meta Horizon Store’.

The Quest name isn’t going anywhere though, at least not in the short term. Meta said in April it’s going to continue producing Quest to showcase its hardware and software advancements. This also means the company will effectively be competing against its hardware partners, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions will need to tap into “specific use cases” to best differentiate themselves.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.

  • The last remnant of Oculus, GONZO ….
    ()^ [

  • sfmike

    Why name it for the worst virtual world ever created?

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      If you really believe that Horizon Worlds is the worst virtual world ever created, you must be blissfully unaware of some of the things available for PCVR on Steam.

  • xyzs

    Makes sense for coherence… even if the name is meh.
    I think their biggest mistake was to rebrand Oculus as Meta.

    So far, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp etc. have kept their original name even though the parent company is now called Meta.
    Why an exception for Oculus rebranded under the parent company directly, while Oculus was a very famous brand that the average Joe was using directly to describe VR?
    No idea. I think it's because Zuck wants to be officially considered as the founder of the XR future, and erase Luckey from history.