I can't think of a more ceremonious way to kill a brand to hold an event announcing that the entire company was pivoting to do what that small piece of it did before, and that to monumentalize that change you were renaming the company...<p>It's... literally a ceremony... and not a small one.
“Meta Unceremoniously Kills Off Oculus Brand” - Meta: The New Meta. Facebook pretending to be self-aware is the new meta. No that’s old-meta. What’s the take? Hmm. Pick a New Name: The Easiest Meta. Introduce Meta to the popular discourse. Let the masses use it freely. Embrace the freedom of missed interpretation. It’s not Fake, it’s Meta. It’s not Facebook, it’s Meta. You wouldn’t understand, it’s too meta. How cool would it be if we just called it Meta? Metacognition. Meta-engineering. Meta-reality: it’s the business we’re already in! Have you seen the new Meta branding? It’s like the universe, but meta, and now we own it. It was so simple! The new meta, endlessly cyclical, and quite a long way from advice dog. Rush B. Trust Me.
I don't understand this move. As much as Facebook has tarnished the Oculus brand, it still had positive attachment among longtime VR users and enthusiasts. For me the 'Meta' brand is linked more strongly with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, in an overwhelmingly negative sense, than with Oculus or VR.
As much as I dislike facebook, dropping the Oculus brand is probably a good move for the bet they're making.<p>Oculus is too associated with gaming. Facebook wants VR for telepresence, they don't want the gamers market, they want the facebook market.<p>I think VR sucks and I hate it, but if Zuck convinces my mum to strap on a headset, there won't be much I can do about it. And he has powerful means to convince people...
The Facebook brand is tainted so they're renaming themselves Meta because people won't be trigger by "a Meta Company" in the site footer.
This is really weird!! Oculus has a great branding. My only theory is that they want to make it tighter to Meta so as not to get into any antitrust issues. But even then it doesn't make any sense to me...
I'm not sure if this reporting is correct. If you check meta.com and on the top menu "what we build" you can still see Oculus in the list.
Is there any company that's even close to Oculus in the VR space? I know HTC's Vive and Valve's Index could compete with the Rift, but they didn't have the Oculus app ecosystem. Samsung's standalone died, same with Google. Is there anything equivalent to the Quest 2?
This still exists - <a href="https://about.facebook.com/technologies/oculus/" rel="nofollow">https://about.facebook.com/technologies/oculus/</a>