- Kyle Chua
Meta Opening Physical Store for Metaverse-Related Hardware
Meta announced that it’s opening a brick-and-mortar store for people to try out its metaverse-related hardware in person.
Simply called the Meta Store, the retail space is scheduled to officially open its doors on 9 May. It’s located on the Meta Burlingame campus, the same place that houses the company’s Reality Labs division.
“Having the store here in Burlingame gives us more opportunity to experiment and keep the customer experience core to our development,” said Martin Gillard, Head of Meta Store. “What we learn here will help define our future retail strategy.”
The company formerly known as Facebook touts that the debut shopping experience will let customers go hands-on with metaverse-related hardware, such as the Quest 2 and the Ray-Ban Stories.
“Through interactive demos, you can make video calls to retail associates with Portal, learn how Ray-Ban Stories can help you stay present with the world around you, and explore the magic of VR with a first-of-its-kind immersive Quest 2 demo,” the company wrote in a blog post.
“At the Meta Store, we want you to interact with everything. We want you to pick stuff up. We want you to feel it.”
The store is about 1,550 square feet and houses multiple demo areas. The most notable of which is the interactive Quest 2 display wall, a large curved LED display that mirrors what customers are seeing in their demo headset. There, customers can play virtual reality games like Beat Saber, GOLF+, Real VR Fishing or Supernatural and get a 30-second mixed reality clip that they can share after the experience.
Meta did not say whether it plans to eventually open more stores down the line. For now, all the company wants for this store is to show people what’s possible with products it comes out with in an effort to help them better understand the metaverse concept.
Meta announced that it’s opening a brick-and-mortar store for people to try out its metaverse-related hardware in person.
It’s located on the Meta Burlingame campus, the same place that houses the company’s Reality Labs division.
The company did not say whether it plans to eventually open more stores down the line.