{"id":354722,"date":"2025-12-17T21:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T21:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/354722\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T21:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T21:37:07","slug":"meta-is-pausing-its-dream-of-sharing-quests-horizon-os-with-third-party-headset-makers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/354722\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta is pausing its dream of sharing Quest&#8217;s Horizon OS with third-party headset makers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meta says that it has paused its program to share Meta Horizon OS, the mixed reality operating system that powers its Quest headsets, with third-party device makers. The program was part of the company\u2019s metaverse push \u2014 the idea behind the program was to create a \u201c<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.meta.com\/blog\/meta-horizon-os-open-hardware-ecosystem-asus-republic-gamers-lenovo-xbox\/\" target=\"_blank\">new generation of hardware<\/a>\u201d that would give VR users their pick of devices when it came to engaging with Meta\u2019s digital worlds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have paused the program to focus on building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market,\u201d a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch. \u201cWe\u2019re committed to this for the long term and will revisit opportunities for third-party device partnerships as the category evolves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The news was<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.roadtovr.com\/meta-horizon-os-third-party-headset-cancelled-asus-lenovo\/#google_vignette\" target=\"_blank\"> originally reported<\/a> by Road to VR.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last April, the tech giant<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.meta.com\/blog\/meta-horizon-os-open-hardware-ecosystem-asus-republic-gamers-lenovo-xbox\/\" target=\"_blank\"> announced that<\/a> it would be opening up Meta Horizon OS to third-party headset makers. At the time, the company said that Asus, Microsoft\u2019s Xbox, and Lenovo, were all working on creating new hardware that would run the company\u2019s software. \u201cAs we\u2019ve seen with the PC and smartphone industries, consumers are best served by a broad hardware ecosystem producing both general-purpose computing devices and more specialized products, all running on a common platform,\u201d the company said at the time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Between the announcement of the partner program and now, there haven\u2019t been a whole lot of updates about it. In September, at the company\u2019s Connect event, a Meta spokesperson<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.roadtovr.com\/meta-horizon-os-asus-lenovo-quest-connect-2025\/\" target=\"_blank\"> said that<\/a> Meta was still working with its business partners to push Horizon OS into more devices.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Horizon OS was designed to deliver \u201cmixed reality experiences,\u201d and to communicate \u201csocial presence\u201d through technologies like hand, body, eye, and face tracking. It launched in the days when Mark Zuckerberg <a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/mark-zuckerberg-lays-out-the-future-of-meta-140009379.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">still maintained that<\/a> the metaverse was the \u201cfuture\u201d of his company.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unfortunately for Horizon and the coders who work on it, Meta and its top executive have seemed less and less interested in the metaverse in recent times, as AI becomes a larger focus for the company. Earlier this month, Bloomberg<a href=\"https:\/\/sg.finance.yahoo.com\/news\/meta-zuckerberg-plans-deep-cuts-063541372.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> reported that<\/a> the metaverse group within Reality Labs, Meta\u2019s unit focused on VR and AR hardware, was facing potential budgetary cuts as high as 30%. The company subsequently<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/12\/04\/technology\/meta-cuts-metaverse-unit.html\" target=\"_blank\"> confirmed that<\/a> it was planning on \u201cshifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and wearables given the momentum there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Techcrunch event<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meta says that it has paused its program to share Meta Horizon OS, the mixed reality operating system&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[43100,64,63,194507,266,1333,68960,2577,105,238,239,240,7476],"class_list":{"0":"post-354722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-virtual-reality","8":"tag-asus","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-horizon-os","12":"tag-lenovo","13":"tag-meta","14":"tag-metaverse","15":"tag-microsoft","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-virtual-reality","18":"tag-virtualreality","19":"tag-vr","20":"tag-xbox"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}