Meta's unpopular Oculus Quest rebrand continues (and so do the complaints)
Is anyone happy about this?
It's fair to say the renaming of Oculus to Meta hasn't gone down a storm with fans. But that hasn't stopped Meta (formerly known, of course, as Facebook) from doubling down on the rebrand, slapping its new logo on the Quest 2 headset – and renaming said hardware the Meta Quest. And now, it looks like the Oculus brand might finally be no more.
When Meta announced its first physical 'metaverse' store this week (basically a shop that lets people try and buy headsets), it was the convergence of VR and the real world that grabbed headlines. But at the same time, Meta retired one of the last pieces of Oculus branding: occulus.com is now meta.com. (Not joined the VR game yet? Check out the best VR headset deals.)
The store, which sells the Oculus, I mean Meta, Quest 2 alongside other products like the Facebook, I mean Meta, Portal, marks one of the final nails in the coffin for the Oculus name. Perhaps the last bastion is the Oculus mobile app – but as TechRadar notes, this will probably get the Meta treatment soon.
And once again, social media is unhappy about the change. "No matter how hard Facebook tries, I'll always call it the Oculus Quest," one user (of many) tweets, while another adds, "I'll never call it the Meta Quest, Oculus will live on in our hearts!". Basically, there are lots and lots of Tweets along those lines.
And not only is it unpopular, but the name change isn't proving particularly successful – if Google is anything to go by. After a quick check on Google Trends, TechRadar revealed that while there's still plenty of search for 'Oculus Quest', pretty much nobody is Googling 'Meta Quest'. Not a great sign for a rebrand.
There's nothing more soul sapping and fun destroying than booting up my Oculus headset for the first time in several months, and the first thing I see is the Meta logo instead of the Oculus logo.never should've bought Oculus, goddamnitApril 6, 2022
Still, despite the branding controversy, the Oculus Quest (yeah, we're gonna keep calling it for now) is going from strength to strength. This Christmas was the product's best ever in terms of sales, and if rumours are to be believed, the Oculus Quest Pro is already sounding pretty incredible. If you want to see what all the fuss is about, check out today's best Quest 2 deals below.
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Daniel John is Design Editor at Creative Bloq. He reports on the worlds of design, branding and lifestyle tech, and has covered several industry events including Milan Design Week, OFFF Barcelona and Adobe Max in Los Angeles.