ByteDance launched Pico Lab, its equivalent of Quest’s App Lab for Pico.
App Lab on Quest is a way for developers to upload apps to Meta’s platform and share them directly with users via a URL. App Lab apps aren’t listed in the main store and only show up if you search for them by exact name.
Like App Lab, Pico Lab has a much less strict and lengthy approval process compared to getting onto the main store. It’s a way for smaller developers to easily share their content with prospective users, or for larger developers to publicly test new ideas.
However, Pico Lab currently only supports free apps, whereas Quest’s App Lab has allowed paid apps from the start. Pico Lab apps can’t use in-app payments either.
Pico’s main store has slowly but steadily been getting ports of most of Quest’s main non-exclusive titles, and Pico 4 actually has superior hardware compared to Quest 2. However, nine months after launch it still isn’t sold in North America. It was reportedly supposed to launch in the US in March, but this was reportedly halted due to the congressional hearings about possible Chinese government access to TikTok user data and influence over the content recommendation algorithm.
David Heaney
