Meta’s campus in Burlingame, California will be home to its first physical retail space where you can check out Quest 2 and its accessories as well as the Ray-Ban Stories sunglasses and the Portal video-calling device.
The store opens May 9 with interactive demos for “Beat Saber, GOLF+, Real VR Fishing or Supernatural on a large, wall-to-wall curved LED screen that displays what you’re seeing in-headset,” according to a blog post from the company.
“If we did our job right, people should leave and tell their friends, ‘You’ve got to go check out the Meta Store,’ Martin Gilliard, Head of Meta Store, is quoted as saying. “We’re not selling the metaverse in our store, but hopefully people will come in and walk out knowing a little bit more about how our products will help connect them to it.”
The store is said to be 1,550 square feet and also offers the ability to do a test call with the Portal video calling device and try out different styles of the Ray-Ban Stories camera glasses. It sounds like the main attraction here, however, will be the Quest 2-powered mixed reality installation, which promises to give VR players “a 30-second mixed reality clip of your demo experience that’s yours to share”, with the video wall offering a live view into VR as it is being experienced.
The Meta Store represents a major new milestone in the transformation of Facebook into Meta, with a tab on Meta.com added where people can buy a “Meta Quest”, with the $299 entry level price of Quest 2 likely meaning that the new URL will become the entry point for millions of future VR buyers picking out their first VR headset.
The store will be open from May 9 Monday through Friday from 11 am to 6 pm Pacific time, located at 322 Airport Blvd in Burlingame, California. You can purchase Quest 2 and its accessories as well as Portal video calling devices, and if “you’re interested in purchasing Ray-Ban Stories, a retail associate will help you order them directly from Ray-Ban.com.”
Apple opened its first physical store in 2001 ahead of the release of the iPod and now its global footprint with hundreds of locations offers service and repair to products which didn’t exist at launch. As Meta builds toward new generations of wearable computers, the Meta Store could become a major part of fitting and testing these products.
Here’s some images provided by Meta showing the store:
