Ready at Dawn Studios, the game studio behind the Echo virtual reality series for the Meta Quest, has been shut down by its parent owner, Meta, effective immediately. Android Central reported Meta’s decision to close Ready at Dawn Studios almost a year and a half after purchasing the game studio. The news comes on the heels of a mid-July report that Meta plans to cut its Reality Labs division’s budget by 20 percent by 2026 when it is reportedly scheduled to release the Meta Quest 4 and Quest 4s, its next VR headsets. Ready at Dawn’s reach in the gaming industry goes all the way back to the days of Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP). The studio released its first game in 2006 with Daxter, a PSP spinoff of the popular Jak and Daxter series. Ready at Dawn also released three titles in Sony’s God of War series for the PSP including Chains of Olympus, Ghost of Sparta, and the Olympus Collection that bundled its two earlier titles. The studio made the jump to consoles starting with the PlayStation 4 in 2015 with The Order: 1886. The rise of and ease of access to virtual reality prompted the studio to pivot again in 2018 to the new immersive game medium. Oculus bought the studio in 2023 and allowed it to continue operations in its California and Oregon offices. Meta has slashed more than 20,000 jobs since 2023, a period that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has characterized as a “year of efficiency.” Meta also shut down its free Echo VR game due to dwindling player numbers.
