You probably thought that the metaverse was dead but the newly-announced Meta Quest 3 has proved that you’re… perhaps not wrong but you’re also certainly not right. Not yet, at any rate. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has taken yet another crack at cracking the virtual reality market with an upgraded sequel to the Oculus Meta Quest 2. Best of all, it does this at a lower price point than the massively overpriced Meta Quest Pro.
Local pricing isn’t available yet because, as usual, the hardware isn’t coming into the country through any of Meta’s own channels. The overseas pre-order pricing of $500 works out to around R10,000, so we’d be surprised to see it launch here any cheaper than around R12,000. Is the hardware good enough to tempt you regardless?
Quest 3: The Questioning Continues
There are two editions launching this year, both of which feature a speedier new Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset. It’ll supposedly outperform the Meta Quest 2, which is this headset’s entire job so it bloody well better. Double the GPU power, faster load times, and speedier gameplay are apparently on the cards, with 8GB of DRAM helping out there. Mixed reality is also a larger focus with the Quest 3 — Meta claims that its new passthrough cameras will outperform even its R27,000 Quest Pro headset.
Included with each headset are two new Touch Plus controllers. If you need to be told what these do, you probably shouldn’t buy one of Meta’s new devices. The headset itself weighs in at 515 grams and its battery will last anywhere from 1.5 hours to just under three hours. The included 18W charger should get it up to full again in about two and a half hours. Allegedly, anyway. We’ll test that for ourselves, thanks.
We did mention that there are two different versions of the Meta Quest 3. These are split by the amount of internal storage. The base Quest 3 (which will cost $500) features 128GB of storage. The larger of the pair features 512GB of space and a $650 (R12,500) price tag. Again, expect that one to cost more at launch than here at home. The smaller of the pair comes with a copy of Asgard’s Wrath 2 (the trailer is above) while the larger will include six months of access to Meta’s Quest+ subscription service.
The headsets will be fully backward compatible with all existing Oculus/Quest titles and they’ll also connect to PCs via a Link Cable or Air Link wireless connection in case you finally want to take a crack at the perfection that is Half-Life: Alyx.
The Meta Quest 3 will launch overseas on 10 October but we’re unlikely to get it that early. Stuff will be keeping an eye out for the kit so we can let you know a) what it costs here and b) whether that price is worth it.
