Facebook unveils Horizon Home social VR spaces, Messenger VR calls, fitness VR, Quest for Business, including Work Accounts support on Quest 2, and more
Facebook's metaverse could be the successor to the modern internet … Devindra Hardawar / Engadget : Facebook says it doesn't want to own the metaverse, just jumpstart it Lisa Brown Jaloza / Facebook Technology : A year of progress with Project Aria Mitchell Clark / The Verge : Active Pack accessories prepare your Oculus Quest 2 for sweaty VR workouts Kieran Harris / Gamereactor UK : A VR version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is in the works for Oculus Quest 2 Devindra Hardawar / Engadget : Oculus Quest 2 gets a new living room, Slack and more apps Janko Roettgers / Protocol : Facebook teams up with BMW to test AR glasses in cars Scott Hayden / Road to VR : ‘Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ in Development for Oculus Quest 2 Rob Thubron / TechSpot : Oculus Quest VR headsets to remove Facebook account requirement; GTA: San Andreas coming to VR Tweets: @oculus : Experience the iconic, open-world of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in an entirely new way. This @RockstarGames classic is in development for Oculus Quest 2. More details soon. #FBConnect https://www.oculus.com/... https://twitter.com/... Davey Alba / @daveyalba : WHERE ARE THEIR LEGS https://twitter.com/... @technology : favorite screenshots from facebook connect without context: a thread https://twitter.com/... Chris Person / @papapishu : Lol I'm glad I saved that part of it, this is the metaverse part. Hope someone saved the full thing https://twitter.com/... Tom McSlay / @thetomzone : I'm almost certainly wrong but I feel like the question of the odds of Facebook being the future monopolist power of the “metaverse” comes down to: how many people do you know who own or use a VR headset? Spatial / @spatialxr : 🚨 Big day for us today 📢 Super excited to announce that Spatial is changing our name to Oculus 👁🗨 Thanks for the trade @boztank !!!🙏🙏 https://www.theverge.com/... Tom McSlay / @thetomzone : this feels a bit like late-90s early-2000s Microsoft, minus the.. very important fact they actually antitrusted Microsoft. Facebook is probably not capable of envisioning whatever the next shift will be, like MS lost on mobile. When's last time FB did anything but buy competitors
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook had already positioned Quest as the hardware foundation for social VR with the Quest 2 launch and had replaced its earlier VR social products with a planned Horizon multiplayer world. Horizon Home, Messenger calls, fitness accessories and work features turn that direction into a broader set of daily use cases on Quest 2.
The business push also makes identity a central product question: subsequent coverage says Quest will move away from mandatory Facebook logins through Meta accounts, separating headset access from Facebook identity.
First-order effects
- Quest 2 users gain social spaces, Messenger calling, fitness-oriented accessories, Slack and other apps, expanding the headset's use beyond standalone games.
- Facebook gives employers a managed entry point through Quest for Business and Work Accounts, while tying Horizon Home to its existing social services.
Second-order effects
- Work Accounts and Slack support put collaboration software vendors and enterprise headset suppliers in a position to compete for the same immersive-work deployments Facebook is targeting.
- Fitness features, social spaces and a planned Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas release broaden the content and accessory ecosystem that makes Quest hardware more valuable to buyers.
Third-order effects
- If Facebook can sustain the product mix, Quest is becoming a platform where consumer social services, entertainment and workplace software share the same identity and hardware layer.
- The later shift to Meta accounts indicates that VR platform growth will require identity systems that can serve work and consumer users without requiring a Facebook profile.
The trend: VR headsets are evolving from game devices into platform endpoints that bundle social communication, content, fitness and managed workplace access.