Social media giant Meta has moved into physical retail for the first time with the opening of the Meta Store.
The debut location on the Facebook campus in Burlingame, California is viewed as a place for consumers to find out about and trial the hardware that Meta believes will power the metaverse.
Devices available to trial in-store include Oculus Quest VR headsets, connected Ray Ban Stories glasses, which were created with Meta, and Portal video-chat devices. “The best way to understand virtual reality is to experience it,” founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a prepared statement.
Visitors to the space can trial the Oculus VR headsets in a special stage area at the back of the store, which is wrapped in a curved digital screen. Users can trial different VR games, said to include rhythm game Beat Saber and fitness app Supernatural, while everyone else in the store will be able to follow their experience by watching the curved screen, which streams what they are seeing through the headset. Each visitor will also receive a 30-second clip of their VR trial, which they can share on social media.
Visually the design and merchandising of the debut Meta Store is very Apple Store-inspired and looks nice, without being in any way ground-breaking or innovative. Meta has not yet confirmed the breadth of its plans for the Meta Store, but the very fact that a social media giant has turned to physical retail to promote its claim in the metaverse provides a strong indication of the continued relevance of stores in the digital era.
To coincide with the launch, Meta has also rebranded its Oculus ecommerce site as Meta Shop.
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