Not long ago, Quest 2 announced a $100 price increase, which had been seen as a way to make up for the revenue lost by removing the Facebook account binding.
After being opposed by a large number of users, Meta lifted the restriction on Quest's mandatory Facebook binding and launched a new Meta account system.
In addition to retiring the original Oculus brand, the new account brings more user-friendly features that can better protect users' privacy in VR social.
This series of changes seems to reflect some new thinking of Meta in the field of VR social and privacy.
Recently, the Meta account system has been officially launched, and specific details of its use have been made public:
1.Meta separates personal accounts from VR social accounts, introducing two sets of profile systems, Meta Account and Horizon Profile, and Horizon Profile can use a different name from Meta Account.
In simple terms, in Meta Account is mainly responsible for saving user login information, while Horizon Profile is responsible for managing VR avatars.
The The Horizon Profile is responsible for managing the VR avatar, friend system, from which we can see that Horizon Social will become an important part of the future Meta business.
2.Meta account account management centre was launched, which can manage the binding and unbinding of Meta's applications.
3.New users can use their email, Facebook or Instagram accounts to sign up for a Meta account.
Users who are already logged in with a Facebook account or Oculus account can choose to use their email or Facebook account to create a Meta account.
4.New registration via email for old users will automatically sync profiles, purchased content, etc.
Under the original Facebook/Oculus account, which means that Facebook is unbundled and no longer supports sharing to Facebook, or contacting friends via Messenger.
However, you can always choose to add, or delete, a Facebook account.
5.Oculus accounts will be phased out on January 1, 2023, until then users can still use their Oculus accounts without upgrading their Meta accounts.
From the recent Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth in his latest podcast, we learn more about Meta's thinking behind creating a separate account system for VR.
It turns out that the aim is more to better fit users' social needs than commercial interests, and to bring greater user stickiness and vitality to the Quest platform through the feature of adding friends.
Bosworth points out that from experience, the more friends you have on a platform, the more likely you are to use it and spend money on apps on it, and the better the overall experience.
That's why a complete friend system is important for Quest.
And the purpose of this series of moves, from the beginning when Quest was tied to a Facebook account, to the later removal of the ties and the introduction of Meta accounts, actually has to do with the way people socialise and their habits in VR.
