On Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, teased the launch of its latest virtual reality headset, the Quest 3. The Quest 3 is expected to be the first announced headset with “high-res color mixed reality.” The VR headset is 40% thinner than its predecessor, the Quest 2. The Quest 3 has at least three cameras on the front, which might improve the pass-through experiences for users. Pass-through experiences allow users to interact with apps while seeing the real world around them. The video also highlights that the Quest 3 has improved “natural” depth perception for the wearer and better graphics for gaming.
The Quest 3 VR headset will start at $499, and it will ship with a next-generation Qualcomm chipset. Meta will provide more details about the Quest 3 during its Connect conference on September 27. Meta’s Quest 2 headset was released in the fall of 2020, starting at a price of $299.
Meta’s Investment in the Metaverse and VR Headsets
Meta continues to spend heavily on the development of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies to access the metaverse, a yet-to-be-developed digital universe. Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which is developing VR and AR technologies, recorded an operating loss of $3.99 billion in the company’s first quarter while generating $339 million in revenue.
Meta first announced that it would debut the Quest 3 in 2022 as part of the company’s third-quarter earnings. The company’s cost of revenue would grow in part because of “Reality Labs hardware costs driven by the launch of our next generation of our consumer Quest headset later next year.” In July 2022, Meta raised the price of the entry-level Quest 2 from $299 to $399, citing a rise in the costs to manufacture and ship the device. However, on Thursday, Meta announced that it would lower the price of the Quest 2 headset back down to $299 beginning June 4.
Last October, Meta released its Quest Pro VR headset for businesses instead of consumers. Initially, the Quest Pro sold for $1,499.99, but Meta lowered the price of the device to $999.99 in March, and it also reduced the price of a more expensive version of the Quest 2 headset with extra storage from $499.99 to $429.99.
Meta’s investment in VR headsets and the metaverse comes at a time when immersive technology is still far away from being a mainstream consumer electronics hit. Research group NPD Group told CNBC that sales of VR headsets in the U.S. declined 2% in 2022 from a year earlier to $1.1 billion.
Leave a Reply