The most important takeaways from Meta Connect 2022

Meta Connect keynote has just finished: for 90 minutes, Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew Bosworth guided us in discovering the upcoming products and partnerships that Meta is developing on its road to the Metaverse. Like every year, in a few days I will write a super big roundup of the event with EVERYTHING announced (you can subscribe to my newsletter not to miss it), but for now, let me just point out what are for me the main takeaways from the keynote.

A subpar event

Let’s be honest: Meta Connect was utterly disappointing.

• The hardware to be launched at the event had already been totally leaked
• We had no unexpected major VR game announced, nor news on GTA or Assassin’s Creed VR
• Most pieces of news were already been announced or were not that relevant. Some of them, like the new avatars, were much worse than expected

It was a very lightweight talk about XR, social, the metaverse, and productivity, with almost no interest in giving important information. For instance, many writings were there for such a short time that I could not even take a screenshot: the price of the Quest Pro was on the screen for like 1 second and then disappeared. Some info was absolutely missing, like the specs of the Quest Pro were not specified during the launch. This was total nonsense.

The only truly interesting (and surprising!) moment was when Satya Nadella himself appeared to be part of the event. It’s quite uncommon to see two big tech companies partnering and the CEOs of both of them being part of a launch event. I was not expecting it at all, and was quite cool. But all the rest… meh.

Focus on productivity

Meta has already invested in VR gaming and VR fitness. Now the company has clearly stated that wants to invest in a new sector which is productivity. Productivity means especially companies and professionals, and the new expensive Quest Pro headset fits completely this strategy. For this reason, Meta has announced many productivity-focused news, like:

• New features for Workrooms, like integration with Zoom or the ability to use three virtual screens in front of you
• A partnership with Microsoft to bring Microsoft 365 and Teams Immersive Experience on Quest Pro
• Upcoming tools for professionals from Autodesk and Adobe

It has also partnered with Microsoft and Accenture to facilitate the integration of XR solutions inside companies.

This trend was in my opinion one of the most relevant news from Connect. It is interesting how Meta is trying to promote immersive reality by focusing on specific sectors in which it believes the technology can be successful and going vertically on them. Its foray into gaming and fitness went quite well, and I’m curious to see what will happen with productivity. I am still personally very skeptical about people using a mixed reality headset like the Quest Pro for many hours a day at work: I have tried many headsets, and I would not wear anyone of them for many hours at work every day. I mean, I wouldn’t substitute my laptop with whatever headset: even if the Pro is going to be lightweight, I don’t think that having something on the head and close to the eyes for hours is going to be that comfortable. This will be one of the first tests I will personally make and I will keep you updated about that.

I am so not a big believer in XR substituting computers and workstations anytime soon, but for sure XR can be an important productivity tool, for instance for people whose work is prototyping.

Meta Quest Pro and the strategy pivot

Of course the launch of the new device, the Meta Quest Pro, was one of the most important things from Connect. But its launch went exactly as expected, so there was nothing surprising about it.

These are the specs of the device, courtesy of Road To VR:

The device features very high resolution, passthrough RGB, and face and eye tracking sensors. It is also very relevant that it is the first headset running the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ chipset, which gives it 50% more horsepower than the Quest 2. The partnership between Meta and Qualcomm is starting to give its results.

The Quest Pro is launching for $1500/€1800, with preorders opening now and shipping starting on October, 25th. The headset has a price that could make HTC pale, and I wonder why no one has started making the same comparisons that were usually made for HTC. For instance, we could compare the 429€ of Pico 4 with the 1800€ of Quest Pro: both devices are lightweight, have RGB passthrough and high-resolution displays… but the Quest Pro is much more expensive. These were the typical comparisons made between a Quest 2 and a Vive Focus 3, for instance. Now that also Meta went full enterprise, we can see that the prices of the competitors were not that crazy, after all. The reason is simple: the enterprise world has other rules and other prices, because the devices are meant to make companies spare money, so they can be more expensive.

I think that this device is relevant because it flags the beginning of a new strategy from Meta. Quest 1 and Quest 2 were subsidized low-cost headsets made to appeal to consumers. With the very expensive Quest Pro and the focus on productivity, Meta is going for the high end of the market. This change of strategy has been highlighted by the launch of the Quest For Business program.

The current economic conditions and continuous leak of money for the metaverse efforts have made Meta pivot. This is not a secret: in preparation for the Connect, Protocol has published some details about an interview it had with Zuckerberg and that shows the new vision of Meta for XR going forward. Let me quote the most interesting part of the article:
Zuckerberg told me during that interview that Meta was looking to establish two lines of VR devices. “We think that there’s a kind of consumer-grade device, in that $300-to-$500 range, for gaming, social use cases, things like that,” he said. “But then there’s going to be a work-grade device, which is going to eventually [be] a laptop or workstation replacement.”

It’s a new Meta, which has a dual strategy now: it’s in part the old Meta, and in part an HTC-like Meta. I wonder if this pivot is going to pay off.

Satya Nadella

At a certain point, Zuck totally surprised me by announcing a strategic partnership with Microsoft. Satya Nadella went “on stage” and announced a lot of products for which Meta and Microsoft are going to collaborate: Teams Immersive Experience will be available for Quest Pro, and Office 365 will be available on the Meta platform too. We always said that VR to succeed needed the Word of VR and the Powerpoint of VR and now… Meta is bringing Word and Powerpoint to VR. As I’ve said, I’m still not totally sold on using the Quest Pro for working all day… but these two programs are anyway a great addition to the Quest ecosystem.

Microsoft Active Directory and Intune will be compatible with Quest Pro. Intune is an MDM (Mobile Device Management) solution and long story short, this means that all companies using the Microsoft tools to manage the devices (like the mobile phones) used by the employees could use the same tools to manage the Quest Pros bought for the employees.

And last but not least, XBOX Game Pass is coming to Quest, letting many players play games in a big virtual screen on Quest.

For me this was the only exciting moment: two CEOs of two major companies allying together to create the “enterprise metaverse” is a huge piece of news. If the partnership keeps going, together they could really make a lot of steps forward in the enterprise use of VR. Considering how many companies use Microsoft Teams, the partnership can truly open the doors to the enterprise world to Meta. I can’t wait to see what will happen next.

New avatars

At the end of the event, Zuck showed us what will be the new Meta avatars. In my opinion, they were super cringy and uncanny, and I almost regret the ones of the weird selfie that Zuck made some weeks ago.

The interesting news is that the new avatars will finally have legs, but Zuck has not clarified how legs tracking is going to happen… he just said that it works thanks to AI. Meta will also open soon an Avatar store to foster a creator economy around avatars on the platform.

The battle against Apple

Zuck has closed the event by saying that a foundational value of Meta is “openness” and that Meta is doing everything to promote an open metaverse. He clearly opposed this to “other closed approaches”: he said that the history of computing has always been about open vs closed ecosystems. At first, it was Windows vs Mac, and then Android vs iOS. He never said that explicitly, but he clearly hinted that the upcoming battle will be Meta vs Apple, and that Meta is the white knight which will promote openness in the metaverse. The partnerships with Microsoft and other companies should be proof of that according to Zuck.

He even finished his speech by saying “Our role is that the open ecosystem wins out in the next generation of the internet”.

That is very inspiring. BUT I should remind you all that the Quest Store is a closed platform, that the Quest is not rootable, that sideloaded applications on Quest are treated as dangerous stuff, that until a few months ago you needed a Facebook account to use the Quest, that Meta takes the best ideas of the apps on the store and implements them itself, that as a developer you can’t access all camera streams, etc… The Quest is NOT an open ecosystem. It is a “not closed” ecosystem, which is completely different. Apple will surely be worse, but it is not possible to compare the Quest Runtime to Android, which is completely opensource, or even to the Windows PC ecosystem, which is totally open to every kind of customization. With much respect for what Meta has done for the development of the XR ecosystem… if Meta is our champion for promoting openness in the metaverse, then we are completely fucked.

As I’ve said, this was just a quick summary of the most relevant news from Meta Connect with some commentary of mine. What has been your opinion about this event? Do you agree with my thoughts? Let me know in the comments here below or on my social media channels!

(Header image by Meta)