Developer News at Meta Connect 2022

Meta Connect 2022 kicked off today with exciting announcements and product updates that will improve how you develop for virtual and mixed reality—including the official announcement of our newest and most powerful VR headset, Meta Quest Pro.

Our platform is growing, which means there are more opportunities than ever before for you to find an audience and build your business with Meta Quest. To date, $1.5 billion has been spent on games and apps in the Meta Quest Store, and roughly one in three titles are making revenue in the millions. And developers are hitting these milestones faster than ever before.

Case in point is BONELAB, which hit the $1 million mark last month in less than an hour, setting the record as the fastest-selling app in Meta Quest history—but that’s far from the only title seeing success. Both Zenith: The Last City and Resident Evil 4 made over $1 million in their first 24 hours on the platform, and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners has surpassed $50 million in revenue on Meta Quest alone—nearly double its revenue on all other platforms combined.

Developer success also extends to App Lab, which now has over 2,000 apps. We’re continuing to invest in these experiences, and are happy to say that our average turnaround time from submission to response is now less than three business days.

Let’s dive into more highlights from Meta Connect to explore the new and updated tools and programs from Reality Labs that are changing how you can improve your development pipeline and build your business.

Launching October 25, Meta Quest Pro is our most advanced VR device to date. Featuring 10 high-resolution sensors, Meta Quest Pro enables you to build new types of immersive experiences with Presence Platform—our suite of machine perception and AI capabilities that empowers developers to build compelling mixed reality experiences—was announced at last year’s Connect. While mixed reality is supported on Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest Pro was built for it—and now, with the launch of Movement SDK as part of Presence Platform, developers can track eye, face, and three-point body movements—all of which help unlock a new social presence dimension in VR.

Presence Platform is also coming to the web through the WebXR open standard. Web sites in Meta Quest Browser and PWAs in the Store can now access passthrough, understand the scene, and anchor virtual content to the physical world to build Mixed Reality experiences. MR is available in Meta Quest Browser today, and you can try out our showcase WebXR MR demo, Spatial Fusion, starting October 25.

With Meta Quest Pro, the lines between mixed reality and augmented reality are blurring. This progress unlocks the unique opportunity to test AR experiences nearly hands-free in-headset. Starting today, creators and developers can create virtual objects in Meta Spark Studio with easy-to-use templates and advanced customization options. Then, you can test them on Meta Spark Player for Meta Quest devices to see how they come to life in-headset.

Developers can leverage Meta Quest Browser and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) to develop powerful 2D apps. On Meta Quest Pro, users can open those apps in an overlay without leaving their current VR experience, thanks to its 12GB of RAM. PWAs are an industry standard for installable web apps, and are already supported on Meta Quest 2. PWAs help people work, play, and be entertained in VR. More developers are building PWAs for VR, including apps like Xbox Game Pass (Beta), Dropbox, Adobe Acrobat Pro, Coursera, LastPass, and Peacock, which are all on the way. We’re also excited to announce that Microsoft has added Meta Quest support for its popular PWABuilder developer tool, making it easier than ever to build PWAs for our platform.

Learn more about how we’re helping you build apps faster during the “VR Development at the Speed of Light” developer session. And to realize your app’s full potential, check out the Connect sessions included in the “Build Immersive Experiences,” “Create Natural Interactions,” and “Design for Everyone” tracks.

We’re building more tools to help you promote and market your app effectively after launch, and there are several you can start using today to grow your business, strengthen your Meta Quest Store presence, and drive conversions.

A/B Testing can help you evaluate your app’s product detail page (PDP) assets by testing the conversion performance of two assets. Since launching in June, A/B Testing has already helped developers reach double-digit improvements to the conversion rate for their app’s PDP. A/B Testing currently lets you test cover art, video trailers, screenshots, and descriptions, with support for immersive asset testing coming soon. Additionally, our new Release Holdout feature enables you to run automatic A/B tests when submitting metadata changes for your app’s PDP. This feature can help you feel confident making changes without worrying about declining conversion rates—and have those changes automatically roll out to all users when they show improvement.

You can use Immersive Image Layers to drive conversions by adding unique depth to your app’s PDP in-headset. These assets are displayed behind the Store panel and use a combination of objects, characters, and backgrounds to transport people into a scene from your app while they explore your PDP. These assets can help drive traffic and conversion by providing audiences with a more immersive and realistic representation of your VR experience.

Meta Quest Store digital gift cards are also now available, allowing people to gift apps, games, and experiences to friends and family, and enabling developers to take advantage of gifting opportunities and seasons. (Now available online in increments of $15, $25, and $50 at Walmart, GameStop, and Best Buy; coming soon to Amazon and Target.)

Try Before You Buy (TBYB) is a new self-service feature launching later this month for apps in the Meta Quest Store. It can help you drive sales and inspire buyer confidence by offering people a free time-bound trial before they pay. Best of all, you can customize the trial length and audience size for your TBYB offer, letting you find a model that fits your strategy and app experience. Apps with TBYB enabled will also be featured on a dedicated shelf in the Meta Quest Store.

Soon, we’ll be adding a self-service Sales and Bundles feature to the Developer Dashboard that will allow you to propose and run sales, making it easier to create unique marketing moments specific to your app and marketing strategy.

We’re also adding new ways to monetize your app’s IP and improving how your apps appear in the Meta Quest Store. The Meta Avatars Store, which launched on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger in June, will be coming to VR later this year. Over time, we plan to release creator tools so that you can design custom avatar items and sell them. Later this year, we’ll also make improvements to customer Reviews in the Meta Quest Store to ensure that recent reviews are prioritized and reflect the latest updates from your app.

To catch up on all the updates and news from Meta Connect 2022, check out our recap of today's news or visit the Reality Labs Facebook page to watch the keynote, Developer State of the Union, Carmack Unscripted, and individual developer sessions.