Back at the end of October Facebook rebranded itself as ‘Meta’. Facebook the platform was staying put, but everything else was all Meta. And now Oculus is getting the same treatment — well, sort of.
This news was initially announced (opens in new tab) at the end of October by Meta's VP of AR/VR, Andrew Bosworth, but was scheduled to happen in early 2022. However, it now seems to have happened a little earlier, with the Oculus branding slowly being phased out. So that Oculus Quest 2 you just bought is now the Meta Quest.
Weirdly, the brand change doesn’t seem to be universal. Oculus.com (opens in new tab) is still accessible from the old domain name, but the banner specifically states that it’s the ‘Meta Quest' website. On top of that, the product list in the sidebar still refers to the ‘Oculus Quest 2,’ as it always has, and the product page still retains plenty of text referring to the Oculus brand.
In fact, beyond the banner at the top of the page, the word Meta doesn’t even get a mention. Stranger still is the fact I was just served an advert for the Meta Quest while writing this very article.
According to Bosworth, the decision to scrap the Oculus branding was not made lightly. But the move is meant to “simplify” the brand architecture and “make it clear that Quest is a Meta product.”
Well, at the moment, things are a little bit confusing. It may be some time before Meta really hammers home the Oculus rebrand, and the contradictory names on the Oculus website won't help on that front.
Mixed messages aside, this is still a pretty strange decision to make. Oculus has been a well known name in VR circles since before it was bought out by Facebook in 2014 and you could argue it has a lot more recognition right now than the new (and pretty generic) name Meta.
The corporate world really is a mystery, so just keep this in mind. Sometime in the very near future, Oculus is going Meta.
