In a surprising announcement, Meta has officially revealed the first details for its Meta Quest 3 VR headset. The move is clearly designed to divert some attention away from Apple’s expected announcement of its own mixed reality headset which could come on June 5 at WWDC 2023.
In a blog postwe’ve got some early information on what we can expect from Meta Quest 3:
Quest 3 combines our highest resolution display yet and pancake optics to ensure content looks better than ever. To power those extra pixels, it will be the first headset to feature a next-generation Snapdragon chipset developed in collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies. That next-generation Snapdragon chipset delivers more than twice the graphical performance of the previous-generation Snapdragon GPU in the Quest 2—meaning you’ll get smooth performance and incredibly crisp details in immersive games.
Meta claims that the Quest 3 headset has a 40% thinner optic profile than the Quest 2. The headset’s hand controllers will also ditch external tracking rings that give them a “more streamlined and ergonomic form factor.” The headset itself will have two 4MP RGB color cameras and a depth sensor. All games that supported Quest 2 will be supported with Quest 3.
The Meta Quest 3 will launch this fall for $499.99 for the 128GB model. The current Quest 2 headset is dropping in price to $299.99 for the 128GB version and $349.99 starting June 4. In addition, both the Quest 2 and the more expensive Quest Pro are getting a major software upgrade soon:
The Quest 2 and Pro will see up to a 26% increase in CPU performance, up to 19% for the Quest 2 and up to 11% for the Quest Pro.
Meta will hold its Quest Gaming Showcase later today at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET). It will showcase a number of VR games, including one created specifically for Quest 3.
