Meta, for all the talk of the company leaving the actual metaverse behind, was never going to stop releasing VR hardware. The Meta Quest 3 is now official, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg… and this official outline from the company’s website.
The timing of the announcement isn’t suspicious at all. Later this month, Apple is expected to reveal its first crack at virtual reality or augmented reality hardware at WWDC 2023. Meta really wants to run ahead of that announcement, hence the early preview of the device that’ll launch in the third quarter of 2023.
Quest 3: The Quest Rides Forth
Meta’s official announcement page openly suggests that this was put together to try and steal a little of Apple’s thunder. Instead of device specifics, we’re only told that it’ll be packing “a next-generation Snapdragon chipset” capable of more than double the Quest 2’s graphical importance. It’s good to know, but knowing what’s actually inside might be more useful.
Meta’s new VR hardware will start at R10,000 ($500) for the 128GB model, with an unspecified price being set for an unspecified (larger) storage option. Whether you’ll need to buy a batch of extras for the super-premium experience also isn’t known yet. But Meta is making some interesting claims about its new hardware.
Claims like the Meta Quest 3 offering “…[h]igh-fidelity color Passthrough, innovative machine learning, and spatial understanding”, incorporating mixed reality and virtual reality features, and improved tracking, haptics, and optional high-end controllers to users. That last point will, of course, cost you extra. And, if you’re already rocking the Meta Quest 2 and don’t want to upgrade, there’s apparently a software update coming that’ll give that hardware “…an up-to 26% CPU performance increase with an up-to 19% GPU speed increase for Quest 2”. Can Apple beat that? Eh… probably, but we’ll have to wait until next week to be sure.
*South Africa will almost certainly experience a considerable import markup on Meta’s new virtual reality hardware.