“Babe? Why aren’t you logged into your metaverse avatar? Your boss is going to be so mad at you for missing the meeting.” If Mark Zuckerberg gets his way (he probably won’t), this bit of significant other encouragement might become reality (it won’t) in the new future. We’ll supposedly get a glimpse of that future at Meta Connect 2024, which is set for 25 and 26 September this year.
Meta Connect 2024’s announcement came via Twitter X.com, which is a strange place for a company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads to do it. But what do we know about marketing a technology that doesn’t exist yet?
Meta Connect the dots
🗓️ Mark your calendars 🗓️ Meta Connect 2024 will be September 25 + 26 where we’ll explore the future of AI and mixed reality and share progress on our long-term vision to help build the metaverse.
— Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) June 3, 2024
When the event kicks off, it’ll show off some new hardware (now with added artificial intelligence integration), as well as update everyone on Mark Zuckerberg’s “long-term vision to help build the metaverse”. That hasn’t gone away, even though it’s impossible to build unless you own most of the internet.
But hey, VR and augmented reality are on the menu as well. The Meta Quest 3 debuted at last year’s Meta Connect and there’s no reason to expect that we won’t see the next hardware from the company at this year’s outing. We might also see some of the fruits of Meta’s union with various hardware makers. The social media giant recently licensed its HorizonOS software to Asus, Lenovo, and other unnamed companies. Branded headsets are a possibility this September.
Also possible is an Xbox-branded augmented (or mixed) reality headset, something the company has explicitly said it’s working on. It’ll be a “limited-edition Meta Quest, inspired by Xbox”, which isn’t a guarantee that you can use it while playing games on an Xbox.
We (and you) won’t have to wait until September 2024 to find out what’s going down at Meta Connect 2024. Here’s a signup page that will net you upcoming details, like speakers, events, and featured hardware, before it all goes down on 25 and 26 September.
