Meta Quest 3 VR headset officially announced as a major upgrade

01 June 2023 , 14:59

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The Meta Quest 3 (right) represents a huge step up spec-wise over the Meta Quest 2 (left) (Image: Meta)

The battle for dominance within the VR headset space continues, as Meta has formally revealed the Meta Quest 3 and all the differences compared to its predecessor.

Ahead of the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase happening later on tonight, Meta has just officially unveiled the price, spec and launch date for its new upcoming Meta Quest 3 headset. Meta’s latest hardware revision comes with new and improved features and a much more powerful chip.

Meta revealed as much in a post over on the Facebook news blog, where it was revealed that the Meta Quest 3 will launch as early as this Fall, with a 128GB model retailing for $499.99. In sterling that translates to roughly £399.24 while in Australia it’s AU$763.69, though these almost certainly won’t be the final RRP in those territories.

Specific improvements Meta has highlighted when compared to the Meta Quest 2 include improved mixed reality (AR) functionality, improved performance, haptic controllers, hand tracking, higher resolution and a much slimmer headset design. They have also claimed that it will bring double the GPU processing power to the table when compared to the Meta Quest 2 in the form of a next-gen Snapdragon chip.

This brings it in line with the vast advancements in the virtual reality space since the launch of Meta Quest 2, with some of these features already being present on the PSVR 2 and HTC Vive Pro headsets. Despite supposedly packing even more of a punch than PSVR2 and being standalone, this headset still comes in at a lower price point than the competition.

PSVR 2 is already losing to the Meta Quest 2 in the VR headset battle

Unlike Sony’s headset, Meta has also confirmed that the new console will be backwards compatible with the full library of over 500 games which are available for the Meta Quest 2 with even more launching at the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase tonight.

Despite PSVR 2 having an ever-expanding list of amazing titles available, it still hasn't caught up with the mass amount of games that already lives on the Meta Quest Store. The recent PlayStation Showcase only brewed further disappointment for VR fanatics such as myself with very little attention given to the platform.

It was also revealed that the Meta Quest 2 will receive a significant price drop as early as this week on Sunday, June 4. Whereas before the MSRP was $399.99 in the US for the 128GB model, this will come down to just $299.99. Meta has stated that this is in order to make virtual reality more accessible.

Jasmine Mannan