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Comment by technotony | Hacker News Reader

"we encourage the Google Play 2D app store to come to Meta Horizon OS, where it can operate with the same economic model it does on other platforms." - I feel like this might be the rub of this. Google is way behind in building the android of spatial computing, and maybe this can play into the trust busting cases where meta can show Google not playing fair?

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Meta is desperate to get devs to develop apps on their platform. It is the only way to get more interest in VR. Devs dont want to be on it because there are no customers, consumers don't want it because there's no apps. They've been trying to market it hard but nothing has worked. They tried to brand it as a fitness device, a work device, and a game device, but the consumers are not biting.

They hit $1b in revenue on their store last quarter. I'm not sure how you evaluate that but it's something more than "not biting" I think.

They are selling plenty of games. The issue though is that the Meta Quest consumer is cheap and would rather buy an MQ2 at a discount than an MQ3.

It sounds to me Meta is terrified of Apple and they needs apps sooner rather than later.

> they needs apps

Meta likely has the most apps and most users of any one VR platform. Sure everyone needs apps, but they needs apps the least, especially from Play Store.

Unless you see using phone apps as 90" virtual screens as a killer feature at least.

Before iphone came out there were smartphones too. But they became quite irrelevant when iphone came out.

(Android was like a year later)

Same fate can happen to metaverse - someone can make a better VR platform.

Doesnt help them that what they have is shit.

from what I've read on the internet they've been asking for this for a long time but google is blocking it, even before there were rumors of the apple headset.

As a user you can already sideload android APKs, I've tried it works great, but you also need to install apps that manage android permissions since you can't grant them through the quest settings.

having the android store there + integrations where android app devs can make the app VR ready would be a big plus. But, the blocker is that google still has ambitions of making some sort of big comeback on the android VR space and therefore are in direct competition with meta.

Maybe. So far, Apple's headset isn't particularly impressive or compelling, but I suppose it's possible they'll fix its issues in a future version.

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