The Meta Quest 3 was officially announced today alongside a release window set for fall and a retail price of $499.99 (USD).
Meta says that the Quest 3 will sport a next-gen Qualcomm chipset that can deliver up to twice the graphical performance of the Meta Quest 2. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg says on Instagram that the Quest 3 is their "most powerful headset yet."
Today's announcement came alongside word that the Quest 3 will be compatible with Quest 2 titles. Its optics will be 40% slimmer compared to the Quest 2. The Touch Plus controllers for the Quest 3 have also been "completely redesigned" to give them a "more streamlined and ergonomic form factor."
Full technical specifications for the Meta Quest 3 were not yet revealed. I suspect we will get more information in the months ahead as this one is a difficult value proposition without any details.
If that $499.99 price tag is a bit much to handle, there is a price cut coming for the Meta Quest 2 options. The 128GB Quest 2 will go down to $299.99 while the 256GB model will be $349.99. Amusingly, this brings the 128GB model back to its original price and the 256GB model to $50 less than its original price before Meta increased the price of both by $100 back in July 2022.
Meta also announced that both the Quest 2 and Quest Pro will get a new software update soon. This software update is said to increase the performance of both VR headsets. The Quest 2's CPU can see up to a 26% uptick in CPU performance and a 19% increase for the GPU. The Quest Pro will see that same 26% increase in CPU performance but just an 11% GPU performance increase.
Meta says that these performance gains on the older hardware should result in smoother gameplay, a more responsive UI, and "richer content" for both devices.
Furthermore, Meta says that they are enabling Dynamic Resolution Scaling on both the Quest 2 and Quest Pro. This should also help increase performance on both of these devices.
