Meta’s experience over its predecessor. The Meta Quest 2 (previously Oculus Quest 2 before its rebranding in 2022), was released in October 2020 as a more affordable entry into VR, starting at just $299 at launch. Meta later hiked the price for its two storage variants by $100 each, bringing the headset up to $399.99 for 128GB of storage and $499 for 256GB.
The Quest 3, revealed first in an Instagram post by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, will launch at $499 for 128GB of storage. Another, higher storage option will be available as well, the company notes in a blog post, but the exact details of that have not yet been released. The announcement also confirms the headset will start shipping this fall, meaning buyers should have the device in their hands before the end of the year.
Quest 3 Performance & Upgrades Over Quest 2
Meta hasn’t gone into depth yet about the Quest 3’s exact specs, but the company says its more advanced design will bring “smoother performance and incredibly crisp details in immersive games.” It’s getting a next-gen Snapdragon chipset from Qualcomm with twice the GPU performance of that in the Quest 2, and will offer high-fidelity color through for a more blended mixed-reality experience powered by Meta Reality. The headset itself is 40 percent slimmer than the Quest 2.
Quest 3's Touch Plus controllers are designed to be more ergonomic as well. Meta has dropped the tracking rings from the controller and added TruTouch haptic . The system will also hand tracking with Direct Touch from the get-go, meaning s can ditch the controllers to interact with the virtual environment. Quest 3 will be backward compatible with Quest 2 games, though Meta promises it has “even more exciting new VR and MR titles lined up for launch.”
With the impending release of the Quest 3, Meta is dropping the Quest 2’s price back down, now selling the 128GB version for $299.99 and the 256GB for $349.99. The company is also planning software updates to improve the performance of the older models, stating in the blog post that “Quest 2 and Pro will see an up-to 26 percent U performance increase with an up-to 19 percent GPU speed increase for Quest 2 and 11 percent for Quest Pro.” The older devices will continue to receive updates for the foreseeable future. Meta will reveal even more about the Quest 3 at its September 27 Meta Connect event.
Source: Mark Zuckerberg/Instagram, Meta