In a surprise announcement this week, Meta revealed plans to open up its OS to third parties, allowing other hardware makers to create their own ‘Quest' headsets. One of the first partner on board appears to be none other than Microsoft, just shortly after abandoning its Windows Mixed Reality efforts.

As part of Meta's official announcement blog, it confirmed that it has teamed up with Xbox once again, this time to create a limited edition Xbox-inspired Quest headset, with black and green colours. Previous partnerships have seen Microsoft supplying Xbox controllers for all Oculus Rift headsets at launch and more recently, Xbox Cloud Gaming became available for Quest headsets.

Aside from Xbox Cloud Gaming, Quest users can also access services like Steam Link, or use Air Link to stream other games wirelessly from their PCs. Meta has also expressed desire for Google to broaden its support of the Quest platform. The company already has a decent YouTube app for the headset, but the Play Store on Meta Horizon platform would open these devices up to many more apps.

Moving forward, the Meta Horizon OS will be made available to hardware manufacturers and Meta will continue to ship free updates. Meta has also confirmed plans for Lenovo and Asus ROG to launch their own Meta Horizon headsets in the future but specific details are yet to be confirmed. We'd expect to get more details on this later in the year.

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KitGuru Says: What do you think of Meta's plan to open up the Horizon OS to other hardware makers moving forward? Being able to access multiple stores in the future will surely be a bonus too.

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