By Katie Paul

BURLINGAME (CALIFORNIA) – Wednesday’s preview of Meta Platforms Inc, the owner of Facebook (NASDAQ) was given by a representative from Meta Platforms Inc. The store features a floor to ceiling screen that allows users to play games and test out their virtual reality headsets.

This store will be open in May 9 at Meta’s Reality Labs main campus, located in Burlingame, California, Silicon Valley. It is currently developing hardware products for the company, which include Ray-Ban smart sunglasses, Portal video-calling device and Oculus VR headsets.

The store’s design is minimalist and features blonde wood. It echoes that of Apple Inc (NASDAQ) which established retail stores over two decades ago.

Opened in November, the Meta Store makes tangible the future vision of the biggest social media company on the planet. It has been investing heavily in virtual reality and augmented realities in an effort to develop the “metaverse,” the term that refers to immersive, shared virtual places.

Mark Zuckerberg is the chief executive officer of Facebook. He believes the metaverse will be the future’s largest computing platform. But he cautions that it could take a decade before the company sees the returns on its investments.

Meta has been cutting down on long-term investments as the company’s growth is slowing, and it still relies almost exclusively on digital advertising for its revenue.

Meta promotes its hardware to consumers and pitches them to business. The company demonstrated conference calls, which can include a combination of traditional and virtual reality avatars at the shop.

Micah Collins (director of product management), said that the company has been testing augmented reality technology to allow users to participate in conferences via Portal as avatars without having headsets.

Collins said the metaverse enterprise business was still young. A spokesperson for Horizon Workrooms stated that most Horizon Workrooms usage, VR conferencing technology from Meta, is coming from within Meta.

Collins maintained that Collins believes the company sees an opportunity.

While many products may still be in the early stages and are not well known, he stated that there was enough to give him confidence to enter this market.