Meta says it will remove Quest's privately held App Lab and instead make the store much more open.
The current Meta Quest Store has received both criticism and praise for its highly curated store console-like approximation. That approach avoids the “shovelware flood” problem that plagues some other stores, but it also severely limits the reach of independent developers, including those with new and interesting ideas that Meta's curators won't like but consumers might like.
Since 2021, Meta has offered a secondary option for selling and distributing apps on the platform, called App Lab. App Lab offers hosting, distribution and monetization, but the apps on it are not listed. Potential customers can only find them via a direct URL link or by searching for the exact app name and scrolling down, and will receive a warning upon installation.
Many of today's most popular Quest Store apps started as App Lab apps, including Gorilla Tag, the most played app on the platform.
Oculus 'App Lab': Quest Platform gets app distribution outside the store
Developers can now distribute Oculus Quest apps without full store approval or sideloading. Oculus Quest is a semi-closed console-like platform. The Oculus Store was previously the only official way to distribute apps. However, owners can declare themselves developers to enable sideloading, with games and experiments available from the 3rd
Meta today announced the eventual death of App Lab, and it will happen in two phases.
The first phase, coming soon, will add an App Lab tab to the store interface, as seen in the image above. This allows Quest owners to easily search and find App Lab apps, without the need for a URL or exact search term.
The second phase will continue in the future. App Lab will be killed and merged into one unified store, which will inherit App Lab's more open requirements. Meta says that shopping apps must still meet “basic technical, content and privacy requirements” but will no longer be rejected on subjective taste or quality basis.
Meta Horizon OS runs on headsets from ASUS and Lenovo
Meta is turning its Quest software platform into Meta Horizon OS and opening it up to third-party headset manufacturers including ASUS and Lenovo.
This news also comes as Meta announced it renames the Meta Quest OS to Meta Horizon OS and the Meta Quest Store to Meta Horizon Store, making the platform available to third-party headset manufacturers, starting with ASUS and Lenovo.
Horizon Store's more open approach will come as a big relief to independent XR developers who are currently struggling to get reach for their apps, and will help Meta live up to its lofty claims of being the 'open alternative' to Apple Vision . However, it could also hurt the discoverability of existing shopping apps as a wave of new entries arrive to compete, making content recommendations from outlets like UploadVR more important than ever.