Meta is pausing its dream of sharing the Quest’s Horizon OS with third-party headset makers

Meta says it has paused its program to share Meta Horizon OS, the mixed reality operating system that powers its Quest headsets, with third-party hardware manufacturers. The program was part of the company’s metaverse campaign – the idea behind the program was to create a “new generation of hardware” that would give VR users their choice of hardware when it comes to engaging with digital meta worlds.

“We have paused the program to focus on building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We are committed to this for the long term and will revisit opportunities for third-party device partnerships as this category evolves.”

The news was originally published by Road to VR.

Last April, the tech giant announced that it would open up its Meta Horizon OS to third-party headphone makers. At the time, the company said Asus, Microsoft Xbox and Lenovo were all working on creating new devices that could run the company’s software. “As we saw with the PC and smartphone industries, consumers are best served by a broad hardware ecosystem that produces general-purpose computing devices and more specialized products, all running on a common platform,” the company said at the time.

Since the announcement of the Partner Program until now, there have not been many updates about it. In September, at the company’s Connect event, a Meta spokesperson said that Meta was still working with its business partners to push Horizon OS to more devices.

Horizon OS is designed to deliver “mixed reality experiences” and communicate “social presence” through technologies such as hand, body, eye and face tracking. It was launched in the days when Mark Zuckerberg was still asserting that the metaverse was the “future” of his company.

Unfortunately for Horizon and the programmers who work on it, Meta and its senior executives have seemed less interested in transformation lately, as artificial intelligence has become a greater focus for the company. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that the metaverse group within Reality Labs, the Meta unit focused on virtual reality and augmented reality hardware, was facing potential budget cuts of up to 30%. The company later confirmed that it was planning to “shift some of our investments from the Metaverse into AI glasses and wearables given the momentum there.”