Two Meta-owned studios announced that they’ll be moving on from existing projects to work on bigger and better things. They’re not the first studios to do such a thing recently and they definitely won’t be the last, and all of these announcements culminate into one big thing: the upcoming Quest 3 launch later this year is going to be huge.
Onward developer Downpour Interactive announced that it’ll be sunsetting support for the original Oculus Quest, joining other developers (opens in new tab) in ditching Meta’s first-generation Quest headset. But that wasn’t today’s biggest surprise. Rather, that award belongs to the sudden ending of support of Echo VR (opens in new tab) as of January 31.
Echo VR has long been one of our favorite Quest 2 games (opens in new tab) and is easily one of the most unique, bespoke experiences in VR. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of playing sports in zero gravity and no other game on the market recreates the feeling.
Echo VR spun off from the Lone Echo series of games, which were largely single-player driven PCVR games but saw big success on the multiplayer front. Developer Ready at Dawn — the folks responsible for The Order: 1886, God of War: Ghost of Sparta, and several others — was acquired by Meta in June 2020. Echo VR has been free-to-play since its release, bringing in revenue through season passes and cosmetic items.
Like other studios, Ready at Dawn is moving on to its next big project.
So what does it all mean? Meta’s first-party studios are all beginning to concentrate on the upcoming Fall release of the Meta Quest 3 (opens in new tab). Meta now owns nearly a dozen different developers (opens in new tab) and certainly has them working on not just updates for existing games but brand-new ones, as well.
Ready at Dawn’s announcement says exactly that, giving players until August 1st to spend as much time in zero-g VR as humanly possible before the studio pulls the plug on the game completely. The reason? “The studio [is] coming together to focus on our next project.”
What’s next for the company? Many have been hoping for Quest ports of Lone Echo and Lone Echo II (opens in new tab), and while that may certainly be the case — like I said, there’s a clear dearth of zero-gravity games on the Quest — I’d like to think the studio is working on something wholly original built for the ground up for the Quest 2 and Quest 3 hardware.
Likewise, we’re still expecting some huge announcements from Meta over the coming months as we get closer to the Quest 3’s official reveal and subsequent launch. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas VR hasn’t been mentioned since Zuckerberg announced its existence at the end of 2021 (opens in new tab), and we’re still patiently waiting for Assassin’s Creed VR to show its pretty face, as well.
We’re also very sure that Roblox is heading to the Quest (opens in new tab) platform sometime soon, although the company’s most recent teaser doesn’t tell us much.
We’re still expecting some huge announcements from Meta over the coming months as we get closer to the Quest 3’s official reveal and subsequent launch.
But those are third-party partnerships Meta has penned with other studios, so how about Meta’s own studios?
Armature Studio — who was behind the superb Resident Evil 4 VR remake — is almost certainly working on a similar project to bring a big-name IP to the Quest. We’re not expecting Beat Games to drop Beat Saber 2 but the studio has been pretty hush in recent years, seemingly only focused on publicly releasing Beat Saber DLC packs and not much else.
BigBox VR just dropped Quest 1 support for Population: One and we know the company is working on some huge new updates after its recent Sandbox additions, all of which were purpose-built for the Quest 2 (and like 3) hardware.
Iron Man VR developer Camouflaj has been rumored to be giving players a VR treatment of Batman, bringing the company’s expertise on excellent superhero games back for another round. Zuckerberg recently let it slip that Onward 2 was in development, so that covers Downpour Interactive’s plans for the future. That one could certainly be a Quest 3 launch title.
Meta has nearly a dozen first-party studios working on Quest-exclusive VR games.
Sanzaru Games hasn’t been heard from since Meta acquired the studio in early 2020. While we’d love a Quest port of the incredible and genre-busting Asgard’s Wrath, it’s just as likely the studio is working on another original ground-breaking VR title, instead.
Twisted Pixel is known for putting out basically anything the team feels like making, ranging the gamut of genres over the years, so there’s no telling what they’re up to.
And that just leaves Unit 2 — the developer behind Crayta — is almost certainly being used to improve the anemic Horizon Worlds metaverse.
If Meta can complete the sale of Within, it’s entirely likely that we’ll see another fitness-focused game come out of the studio, but that’s certainly not likely to happen this year.
Either way, Meta won’t be abandoning its Quest 2 support any time soon, even with Quest 3 on the horizon. Everything points to the company having sold over 20 million headsets to date, once again selling more than Microsoft’s latest Xbox consoles.
The most popular VR headset is still the best VR headset you can buy, especially for the price. Play exclusive games and become part of an amazing social experience on the Quest 2.
