Meta partners with Microsoft to bring Teams, Windows apps and games to Quest devices

Meta today announced a partnership with Microsoft to bring new content, including Windows apps and Teams links, to Meta's hardware efforts. At Meta's Connect conference this morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Microsoft Teams will integrate with Quest devices and that Microsoft will provide a way to stream Windows apps to Meta's headsets. Nadella also revealed that Microsoft's streaming game service, Xbox Cloud Gaming, will be coming to Quest devices in the coming months.

Image credits: meta

"We're bringing the immersive Microsoft Teams meeting experience to Meta Quest to give people new ways to connect with each other," Nadella said, noting that custom avatars will eventually come to the experience. . Horizon Workrooms, Meta's VR collaboration space, will connect to Teams, he added, allowing people to join a Teams meeting directly from Workrooms.

"Now you can connect, share and collaborate as if you were together in person," Nadella added.

On the Windows side, Nadella said Microsoft 365 will come to Quest in a way that lets users interact with content from productivity apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Tom Warren of The Verge notes that these are not full versions of apps designed for VR, which is important; They are more like Progressive Web Apps.

"You [will] have a new way to securely stream the full Windows experience, including all custom app content settings, to your VR device with the full power of [Windows]", Nadella said. "We've been thinking about how to bring the power of Microsoft 365 and Windows 365 to 3D spaces to really boost productivity and allow you to create, communicate and collaborate in whole new ways."

Image credits: meta

As for Xbox Cloud Gaming, on the Quest it will stream games to a 2D VR display, supporting existing Xbox controllers. But Nadella hinted that additional features may come later.

Microsoft's association with Meta comes as the former recalls its internal VR and AR hardware projects, including HoloLens. The Windows Mixed Reality platform, Microsoft's software foundation built into Windows 10 to support VR headsets, never quite took off as the company hoped. Earlier this year, Business Insider reported that Microsoft had dropped plans for the third generation of HoloLens in favor of a partnership with Samsung on...