Meta Announces the Launch of its First Retail Store to Showcase its Hardware Products

If Meta wants to see wider adoption of the metaverse, then it needs to get more people into VR headsets, and today, it’s taking the next steps on that front with the announcement of a new Meta Store in Burlingame, California.

As you can see in this video, shared by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s new retail outlet will include a range of displays and hands-on demos that will showcase the company’s evolving physical product suite.

As per Meta:

“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 biggest area, of course, is reserved for its VR headsets, with a large Quest 2 ‘display wall’, where people will be able to experience a range of Meta’s VR games and apps.

Here, in-store visitors will be able to try out popular VR games like Beat Saber, GOLF+, Real VR Fishing and more, via a large, wall-to-wall curved LED screen that will display what the user is seeing in the headset. Visitors will also be able to access a 30-second mixed reality clip of their demo experience, which they’ll then be able to share with friends.

This is all in alignment with Meta’s longer-term bet on the metaverse, which will largely involve VR experiences to bring Mark Zuckerberg’s full metaverse vision to life.

The challenging part for Meta, and its shareholders, is that this will take time, and money, to bring to fruition. VR adoption is rising, and the indicators are all there to suggest that the metaverse, as Zuck envisions, can be a reality. But in order to ensure mass adoption, Meta will need to come up with increasingly creative, and expensive ways to showcase its benefits.

Which will likely see it open a lot more retail stores, while Meta may also need to take a hit on the sale cost of its VR and AR wearables in order to ensure critical mass within the metaverse space.

Also, another aspect that Meta could look to eventually integrate into physical stores – full body scan booths to build more accurate avatars.

It’s another step in Meta’s big bet on the metaverse becoming the thing, and again, you can expect to see more moves on this front as it continues to evolve.

Meta’s first retail store will open on May 9th at Meta’s Burlingame campus in California