Meta Quest 3 – more powerful and relatively affordable (Picture: Meta)
As news of Asgard’s Wrath 2 leaks out ahead of today’s Meta Quest Gaming Showcase, a new headset and price cut have already been announced.
The news has been fairly bleak for VR lately, with the PlayStation VR2 seeming to underperform and Meta Quest suffering from huge losses and unavoidable price rises.
As already leaked, there was always going to be a Meta Quest 3, but some wondered whether Meta’s interest in VR was beginning to wane. If that’s the case it’s not obvious at the moment, with the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase on Friday evening expected to unveil a number of new games.
The big news though is the official reveal of the Meta Quest 3, which no less than Mark Zuckerberg himself introduced as: ‘The first mainstream headset with high-res colour mixed reality. 40% thinner and more comfortable. Better displays and resolution. Next gen Qualcomm chipset with 2x the graphics performance.’
We’re not sure why he said/wrote that in such odd, robotic sounding sentences, but maybe he’s suddenly gained a sense of humour and is playing up to the memes.
There’s no indication of a UK price yet but it will cost $499.99 in the US, which works out as £400 here – considerably cheaper than the £529.99 price tag of the PlayStation VR2.
The Meta Quest headsets have always been high quality but their greatest advantage – that you don’t have to connect them to a console or PC – is also their greatest flaw, in that the graphics are never that good, since all the processing has to be done by the headset itself.
However, Meta is promising that the Meta Quest 3 will be their most powerful headset so far, with a new next gen Snapdragon chipset that boasts twice the graphical performance of the Quest 2.
Meta is also pushing the mixed reality (MR – because apparently AR is old hat now) features, with colour Passthrough tech that allows you to see and react with the real world with the headset on, to do things like play board games in Demeo or use non-gaming app Painting VR.
The headset itself will also be 40% ‘slimmer’ than the Quest 2 and come with redesigned Touch Plus controllers that are more streamlined and ergonomic. That includes no tracking ring, new TruTouch haptics, and hand tracking at launch.
There’s no specific release date but more information will be shared at Meta Connect, whatever that is, on September 27.
Meta Quest 2 will be backwards compatible with the Quest 2 and both headsets will continue to be sold in tandem, with the Quest 2 getting a price cut to $299.99 (£240) for the 128GB model and $349.99 (£280) for the 256GB model.
Not only that, but both the Quest 2 and Quest Pro will be getting a processor upgrade, that will increase performance by up to 19% for Quest 2 and 11% for Quest Pro.
None of this suddenly makes VR seem cheap but Meta is clearly doing their best to improve the experience and make it as accessible as possible.
Considering how much news they’ve announced before the games showcase it’s going to be very interesting to see what games they have ready to unveil.
The rings have disappeared (Picture: Meta)
Asgard’s Wrath 2 has already been leaked, a sequel to one of the system’s best action role-playing games. It’s set in Ancient Egypt and since the news came from a website that got the embargo time wrong, and put the news up early, it’s clearly real.
What else will be announced is a mystery but it’s been a long time since Meta promised a special VR version of GTA: San Andreas, so maybe it’s reasonable to hope for that…
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As news of Asgard’s Wrath 2 leaks out ahead of today’s Meta Quest Gaming Showcase, a new headset and price cut have already been announced.