Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are now available on the Meta Quest Store.
They come as progressive web apps (PWAs), meaning they’re essentially just a more convenient way to access the web versions of these Microsoft 365 apps than bookmarks in the Quest Browser, and won’t function without an active internet connection.
As PWAs they open in the standard Quest home interface as 2D panels. That means they can be one of the three 2D apps you can have running side-by-side, and your existing choice of passthrough or virtual home environment as the background will be respected. It also means Bluetooth physical keyboards are fully supported, and you’ll see supported tracked keyboards in VR mode.
As with using Word, Excel, and PowerPoint via the web on any other platform, you’ll need an active subscription to Microsoft 365, which costs $7/month in the US.
Microsoft’s productivity suite is arriving on Quest just as the company brought its Xbox Cloud Gaming platform too. Both services were originally announced as coming alongside Quest Pro at Meta Connect 2022 last year, but have taken over a year to actually ship.
Also announced at Connect 2022 as coming to Quest was Windows 365, which streams a virtual full-fledged Windows 11 PC from the cloud for a subscription fee. That will be the most radical productivity feature for Quest yet, as it will effectively open up access to PC applications rather than just web apps, but there’s no updated timeline for it arriving.
