Meta’s Quest series of virtual reality (VR) headsets run on an operating system that’s based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). As such, these VR headsets can run applications made for Android. Currently, there are two app distribution platforms available on Quest headsets, the Quest Store and App Lab. However, the largest platform for distributing Android apps, the Google Play Store, isn’t available for Quest headsets. The CTO of Meta, Andrew Bosworth, has revealed the reason behind it.
Last Tuesday, Andrew held an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Instagram. During the session, a user asked “Are you planning to support 2D Android apps on Quest 3?” While answering that question, he revealed that Meta wants Google to bring Play Store to Quest headsets but Google isn’t interested in doing so. These were his exact words: “We would love for Google to bring their Play Store of apps to VR. We’ve asked them. They don’t want to do it, and so, it is kind of up to developers to do that.”
Currently, there’s no information about why Google doesn’t want to bring the Play Store to the Quest platform. There could be multiple reasons behind it. For starters, Google is planning to launch a VR headset in partnership with Samsung and Qualcomm, and maybe, the company wants to keep the Play Store exclusive to its own VR platform rather than making it available for other platforms. Doing so would give Google an edge over its competitors in the VR space.
