Meta (the parent company of Facebook) Platforms is all set to open its first physical store where the shoppers will be able to buy virtual reality (VR) headsets as well as other gadgets.
The Meta store is expected to be 1,550 sq ft at the company’s Burlingame campus situated in California. The store will open on 9th May. The store will even showcase demos for its Quest 2 VR headset, video calling device- Portal, and smart glasses – Ray-Ban Stories.
All these devices except for the Ray-Ban glasses will be available for purchase at the store. All the products can also be bought online through their own website, meta.com.
Metaverse is a virtual space where people can interact, work and play by adding new features to hardware devices which in turn will serve as access points to the virtual world.
Earlier this month, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and Meta, stated that they will start testing tools for selling digital assets and experiences within its virtual reality platform, Horizon Worlds, a VR platform that Meta launched later last year.
Apart from this, the company will also charge a 47.5% fee to creators of digital experiences and assets. This move has definitely attracted some criticism from app developers.
According to observers of the industry, VR/ AR headsets are the next big thing in the consumer tech space. By the next 20 years, many market research firms have pegged them to be as ubiquitous as smartphones as they are today.