After recently scrapping its own plans for a virtual-reality headset, Chinese gaming giant Tencent is in talks to bring Meta's Quest headsets to China.
Sources told the WSJ that Tencent wants to be the sole vendor of Quest 2 headsets in China, which has the most video game players of any country. The deal could give Meta access to a broad new market while its VR/AR unit continues to lose money.
While talks are still ongoing, sources said Tencent could publish Chinese versions of existing games available on the Quest 2.
- Meta, Facebook's parent, would offer the ready-made hardware, allowing Tencent to focus on software creation.
- It would allow Tencent, the developer of WeChat, to take on ByteDance-owned VR headset maker Pico Interactive in the Chinese VR market.
- Reports noted that such a deal could draw attention from regulators in both China and the U.S.
The plans come after Reuters reported that Tencent has halted the development of its own VR and extended reality hardware over profitability challenges.
