Madrid
Updated:05/05/2022 12:27h
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The future of the Internet goes through the metaverso; this new virtual world in which users will be able to meet friends, play sports or travel through the use of Virtual reality. Or, at least, that’s what Meta’s CEO thinks, Mark Zuckerberg, which has always recognized that the road that remains to be traveled for this technology to go from chimera to reality is deep. There is still a lot to do, and not only in terms of creating applications and experiences that get the attention of the potential user. You also have to to bring VR closer to a society who, to date, has looked at her sideways.
Convincing ordinary citizens to reach into their pockets to acquire one of his viewers is, without a doubt, one of the main barriers that Zuckerberg is going to have to overcome if he wants his metaverse to come to fruition. And he is already starting to work to achieve it. Meta plans to open on May 9, in Burlingame, located in the state of California and very close to the headquarters of the technology company’s Virtual Reality department, its first physical store. The first Meta Store. A site where users can get in touch with all the devices that the company has been launching in recent years. From their Ray-Ban Stories camera glasses, to their Portal speakers or their Meta Quest 2 VR headsets; those same ones that will receive a new model before the end of 2022.
The objective of the company – to which they belong Facebook, WhatsApp e Instagram– It is not, exclusively, to use the store as a point of sale for its own hardware. In addition, he hopes that the space will help users to better understand the company’s plans, its vision of the future and the possible uses of the technology it is developing. “Once people experience the technology, they can better appreciate it. If we did our job right, people should go away and tell their friends, ‘You have to go check out the Meta Store,’” says Martin Gilliard, director of the Meta Store.
The plan: replicate it around the world
Specifically, the store will have an area of more than 500 square meters. There, visitors, indeed, will not only be able to buy the company’s devices. They will also be able, for example, to put on a Meta Quest 2 viewer to play video games or take photos and record videos with the latest Ray-Ban Stories. “The Meta Store will help people make that connection on how our products can be the gateway to the metaverse in the future. We’re not selling the metaverse in our store, but we hope that people will come in and leave knowing a little more about how our products will help them connect with it,” says Gilliard.
Meta’s plans to start opening physical stores have been known for some time. At the end of 2021, ‘The New York Times’ already shared that Zuckerberg’s company was working on that line. In addition, everything indicates that the Burlingame store will not be the only establishment of this type that will open its doors. Not much less. The company would be thinking of filling the world with Meta Stores. Something similar to what Apple has done in the recent past.
Questioned by ABC a few months ago about what Zuckerberg’s metaverse needs to crystallize, Edgar Martín-Blas, executive director of Virtual Voyagers, one of the few international companies exclusively dedicated to the creation of virtual worlds, and who already knows what is to work with Meta, he affirmed that it was capital for the American company to start opening its own establishments: «Here in Spain you can see the Meta Quest in Media Markt, Amazon or Fnac. What is needed now is for the company to start opening its own stores. They are acting without haste, when they try to replicate it on a global scale it will be worth it.
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