Ready to mingle with the Dunder Mifflin gang in virtual reality?
Meta, looking to spark broader interest in VR, announced a partnership with NBCUniversal under which the companies will team to bring the media company’s Peacock streaming app and a range of properties to the Meta Quest VR headsets. Meta announced the NBCU pact at Meta Connect 2022, its annual developers conference, alongside other content partnerships and product news.
The new VR content from NBCU, set to come to Quest headsets in 2023, will include virtual-reality experiences for hit sitcom “The Office,” Universal Monsters, DreamWorks Animation, Blumhouse and Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights.
During the Connect presentation, Meta announced Meta Quest Pro, the next generation of the company’s VR headsets. Priced at $1,500, the device will ship on Oct. 25.
Previously code-named Project Cambria, the higher-end VR and mixed-reality headset is supposed to more naturally represent the wearer’s expressions and body language with advanced eye- and facial-tracking features. It also features a display with richer and more vibrant colors and greater graphics-processing performance, as well as a sleeker design.
“Virtual reality isn’t some obscure hobby anymore,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, claiming that millions of people are already using VR to play games, interact with others and collaborate with coworkers.
Among other news, Meta announced a partnership with Microsoft to bring its suite of productivity software and Xbox cloud-based gaming services to the Meta Quest headset.
On the NBCU partnership, details aren’t immediately available for what Peacock or the other experiences in VR will look like on the Meta Quest headset.
For its part, NBCU clearly is looking for every opportunity it can to push some wind into Peacock’s sails. Last week NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell claimed the media company’s streamer gained more than 2 million paid subscribers in the third quarter, to top 15 million. That came after Peacock’s paid customer base was flat in Q2. Shell credited a strong content lineup, including Peacock’s reclaiming day-after-air rights to episodes of NBCU shows from Hulu.
According to Meta, the Quest Store has generated $1.5 billion in sales to date, and that 33 of the 400 VR titles in the library have grossed more than $10 million to date.
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