META’S QUEST 3 VR HEADSET IS COMING FOR $499.99

After several leaks and rumors, Meta’s Quest 3 virtual reality and mixed reality headset has been officially announced. Meta revealed the Quest 3 ahead of Thursday’s Meta Gaming Showcase, where it will likely debut several new games. The Quest 3 will cost $499.99 and come with 128 GB of storage, and has a fall 2023 release window. The company says it will go into more detail on the headset during Meta Connect on Sept. 27.

Meta didn’t provide hard specs for Quest 3, but promised “higher resolution, stronger performance, breakthrough Meta Reality technology, and a slimmer, more comfortable form factor” for its next-gen headset. Meta says it has also “completely redesigned Quest 3’s Touch Plus controllers with a more streamlined and ergonomic form factor.”

The Quest 3 is the successor to the Quest 2 that launched in 2020, which has become the most successful and longest supported headset on the market. Like the Quest 2, the Quest 3 is a wire-free headset that doesn’t require a fast PC to use. The Quest 3 will work with the entire Quest 2 catalog, and Meta promises that it will deliver twice the graphical performance of the Quest 2, with higher resolution displays and thinner optics.

Unlike the Quest Pro, which can track your face to make your cartoony avatar more convincing in the metaverse, the Quest 3’s features don’t seem to be leaps and bounds above the Quest 2. However, its passthrough mode has gotten some improvements, with high-fidelity color passthrough, which will let you play augmented reality games, like Demeo, that utilize the Quest 3’s tracking cameras (the Quest 2’s passthrough mode is fuzzy and in color). The Quest 3 also includes redesigned Touch Plus controllers, with advancements in haptics borrowed from the controllers that ship with the pricier Quest Pro.

Meta will continue to sell the Quest 2, albeit at a lower starting price of $299.99 for the 128 GB model starting on June 4, and $349.99 for the 256 GB model. It also announced that an upcoming software update for the headset will increase CPU and GPU performance for the 2020 headset.

2023-06-01T14:31:33Z dg43tfdfdgfd