What is Project Apollo? Does Meta now turn to the subscription?

14 March 20231 year ago babelfish

Mark Zuckerberg's colossus towards subscription? Not of his social networks or WhatsApp, but of the software for his VR viewer. What we know about Project Apollo

As we explained a few days ago, the metaverse of the Menlo Park Group does not seem to be able to break through: so much so that Meta has set 500,000 monthly active users as a goal in the first half of 2023 but currently the number is less than 200,000 units, with the main problem represented by the "retention rate": only 11% of users return to Horizon Worlds the following month. The goal for this year is to reach 20%. Despite this, Meta Quest has sold almost 20 million units: enough to convince Mark Zuckerberg to seek extra revenue, especially in such a period of cuts. And there would be the curious and rumored Project Apollo.

Apparently Meta is adding a game pass thing soon for Quest, “Project Apollo”. Accessible via this deep link URI (on Android at least)

oculus://view/platform_subscription pic.twitter.com/Bz5321zRpv

— Shiny Quagsire (@ShinyQuagsire) March 4, 2023

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT PROJECT APOLLO?

Officially, it does not exist, but a leak, or a corporate flaw, would seem to have revealed Meta Quest Pass, a subscription service for the VR viewer which, according to the information that has emerged, would allow you to download up to two games or applications per month at no additional cost , available in the library as long as the subscription is active.

It would be what in the parts of Menlo Park is nicknamed Project Apollo, precisely in order to guarantee maximum secrecy. However, the service was also discovered thanks to some references in the Meta Quest Android application, which however seem to have also been found in the iOS app, and above all this would give maximum reliability to the leak.

A SERVICE SIMILAR TO PLAYSTATION PLUS

To be precise, some users have found in the software text strings such as: "Get up to two new games or applications every month with Project Apollo" and again "Login every month to redeem your apps and grow your library with more exciting titles in VR” or “Enjoy new apps the day you subscribe. Receive easy access to the best in VR Redeem and install to play now Redeem your apps before the end of the month, and keep access to your apps as long as you're a subscriber.”

Stolen descriptions that appear to configure a subscription service similar to PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Gold. Sony and Microsoft don't like to share the data of their subscriptions, especially the monetary ones, but there is no doubt that retaining users in exchange for intangible software represents an easy source of income for platform managers without too many management costs.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia-on-demand/cose-il-project-apollo-meta-ora-vira-sullabbonamento/ on Tue, 14 Mar 2023 14:50:42 +0000.