Details about Meta Quest 3 were leaked to The Verge.
Alex Heath reports Meta’s VP of VR Mark Rabkin told staff in an internal presentation that Quest 3, launching later this year, will be two times thinner and at least twice as powerful as Quest 2 – but cost “a bit more.” CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously said Quest 3 will be “in the price range of $300, $400, or $500, that zone”, suggesting $500 as the likely entry price.
“We have to prove to people that all this power, all these new features are worth it” Rabkin reportedly said.
Rabkin also reportedly said Quest 3 will have a “Smart Guardian”. The report doesn’t elaborate, but this could potentially involve automatically seeing a 3D outline of furniture, people, and pets when you get close to them. Currently, Quest 2 and Quest Pro let you arduously manually mark out furniture to see a basic rectangular bounding box when near, and you can enable a crude 2D outline feature that doesn’t distinguish between kinds of objects. Late last year, leadership at Meta said it was a goal to make room scanning an automated process.
In September, apparent schematics of Quest 3 were leaked to YouTuber SadlyItsBradley. Unlike Quest Pro, the headset depicted didn’t have either eye or face tracking. It did, however, include pancake lenses to achieve a slim design, and a depth sensor for advanced mixed reality.
Mixed reality will reportedly be a major selling point of Quest 3. “The main north star for the team was from the moment you put on this headset, the mixed reality has to make it feel better, easier, more natural,” Rabkin reportedly said. “You can walk effortlessly through your house knowing you can see perfectly well. You can put anchors and things on your desktop. You can take your coffee. You can stay in there much longer.”
Rabkin also reportedly said there will be 41 new apps and games shipping for Quest 3. Meta has acquired 8 game studios over the past 3 years but has only vaguely teased 1 new game from them. We’ve been speculating for a while now that Meta has been directing these studios to build content for Quest 3.
