Meta will continue to use the Oculus name as part of its third-party VR game publishing program, now officially called Oculus Publishing, with 150 games in active development.
Announced at GDC 2023, Oculus Publishing offers a new name for Meta’s existing efforts to collaborate with developers on everything from conceptualization and financing to promotion of their projects. According to Meta, the company helped fund games like Among Us VR, Bone lab And Blade & Sorcery: Nomadand Meta claims there are “another 150 titles in active development today”.
“More than $1.5 billion has been spent on games and apps in the Meta Quest Store, with 40 titles generating more than $10 million in revenue, and the number of titles making $20 million has doubled year over year” Meta said. You can read more about it in the official blog post.
It’s been almost 18 months now Meta has rebranded itself from Facebook and reduced the Oculus brand it acquired in 2014 to Meta’s Oculus Studios, which saw Oculus Quest 2 rebranded as Meta Quest 2 mid-life cycle. At the time, Meta’s then-incoming CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth claimed they “want to make it clear that Quest is a Meta product,” offering assurances that “the original Oculus vision remains deeply entrenched in how Meta will continue to drive mass adoption for VR today.”
Meta never completely ditched the Oculus name — according to its own development department Oculus Studios – but the new branding suggests the name could live on for quite some time to come. After the long-term acquisition of Within (Supernatural), Oculus Studios now has a number of developers working on first-party content for future headsets, including Beat Games (Defeat Saber) and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR).