Meta breaks ground on virtual reality frontier … with a physical store

Meta Platforms is set to open its first physical store where shoppers can try out and buy virtual reality headsets and other gadgets as the company plots a course to take its highly touted "metaverse" mainstream.

The 1,550-sq ft Meta Store at the company's Burlingame campus in California opens on 9 May, and will feature demos for its Quest 2 VR headset and video calling device Portal, as well as smart glasses it produces with Ray-Ban, Meta said on Monday.

The devices, except for the Ray-Ban glasses, will be available for purchase at the store. The products can also be bought online through a new shopping tab on meta.com, the company said.

Meta is investing heavily in the metaverse - a virtual space where people interact, work and play - by adding new features to hardware devices that serve as access points to the virtual world.

Earlier this month, the Facebook owner said it would start testing tools for selling digital assets and experiences within its virtual reality platform Horizon Worlds, a VR platform Meta launched late last year.

Meta also said it would charge a 47.5% fee from creators of digital experiences and assets, a move that has attracted criticism from some app developers.

Shoppers tracking the space are awaiting the next version of the Quest 2 VR headset, likely to be released in the second quarter and widely seen by analysts as critical to the company's metaverse plans.