Meta wants to bring Reels to its Quest headset. On Meta’s broadcast channel, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared how Reels will appear in the virtual world.
Meta has a huge vision for its Quest devices, and part of it is making the Quest experience more familiar to users. As such, the Facebook and Instagram parent company is bringing one of its creations into the platform: the Reels. In the post shared by Zuckerberg, a sample of a Reels window can be seen flowing in the Quest virtual world. It is complete with the usual Reels features and elements, including captions and other control buttons. It is unclear, however, whether Reels will be included in the Instagram for Quest or if it will be a separate experience.
Meta’s move to inject Reels into Quest is not surprising. In April, as part of its first quarterly earnings call for 2023, the company reported that Instagram saw a 24% increase in time engagement after the launch of Reels.
“We’re very pleased with what we’ve seen Reels drive in terms of incremental engagement on the platform so far.” Meta CFO Susan Li shared the news at that time, saying this increase extends to Reels sharing. “We’re seeing the sharing flywheel take off with Reels re-shares, with re-shares doubling over the last six months.”
The test should also better lift Quest’s name in the VR market, especially now that Apple has officially unveiled its high-end Apple Vision Pro headset. Quest headsets and the Vision Pro have different market tier targets, yet the latter’s arrival is still a threat to Meta. And now that Meta is trying to promote its newly announced Quest 3 device, it has to double down on its efforts to boost the Quest experience to make the Quest products relevant despite the current Vision Pro buzz. As part of that, aside from this Reels test, the company recently announced making price reductions on its Quest 2 headset variants. Also, Meta promised to deliver a software update to Quest 2 and Quest Pro, giving them better CPU and GPU performances.
