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It’s been a hell of a year for the folks at Meta, with the whole rebrand and more, but we’re here to give you the lowdown on a potential Oculus Quest 3, Meta Quest 3, or whatever else you might want to call it. With the Oculus Quest 2 having been proven pretty popular, with record-breaking sales over the last holiday period, it makes sense to iterate on a good thing and further improve the accessible VR headset, but that’s not the only thing that Meta has in the works. It can be pretty complicated to break down, but we’ve got you covered with everything you need to know about what’s going on at Meta.
To be clear, the official name has switched over to the Meta Quest, but a ton of people still call it Oculus. It seems like a shame to ditch the iconic logo and naming, but hey. Mark Zuckerberg has a bigger brain than all of us combined.
The obvious successor to the Quest 2, the Quest 3 is in the works, and with reputable sources coming out of the woodwork and telling us that Meta wants their own custom silicon ready for launch, the headset is poised to make use of the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR3, a custom SoC that we’ve seen in previous generations in the Oculus Quest 2. The catch? It might not come out as soon as you might like.
Oculus Quest 3 release date
According to VR / XR expert Brad Lynch, we might not be seeing the Oculus Quest 3 until at least 2023. This is because of the ramping up of production that needs to occur when the new SoC has been finalized, which is rumored to come with a beefy GPU to handle cutting-edge VR workloads while on the go. However, if these plans fall through the cracks, it’s very likely that the chip that the Oculus Quest 3 or Metra Quest 3 will be using is the XR3. What is likely to be based on is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, but they may also be basing it on a newer-generation of hardware they have in the worlds at Qualcomm and Meta, too.
While Meta has partnered with Qualcomm for the custom SoC, it could have easily partnered up with the likes of Samsung, who are in partnership with AMD for an RDNA 2-based GPU on the arm platform that we would have liked to have seen. Regardless, Qualcomm is a reliable and consistent foundry, and the same cannot really be said for the struggles going on at Samsung at the moment.
The headset has apparently been in development for years, first mentioned by Mark Zuckerberg as far back as early 2021 in an earnings call. He stated to investors then:
“It’s not like software where we’re changing it every couple of weeks. We have product teams spun up now working on the next few generations of virtual reality and what Quest 3 and 4 are gonna look like.“
It’s also speculated that we could be seeing an announcement at Meta’s connect 2023 event, and released afterward. This would pip the Quest 3’s reveal for taking place in October 2023, which is still a while away.
But, that’s not all that’s in the works right now at Meta, they’re cooking up alternatives to the Quest, which is a headset that only occupies one corner of the VR market, they are also looking at the higher-end of the spectrum with the Meta Quest Pro, in addition to Project Cambria.
Oculus Quest 3 specs and features
The Oculus Quest 3 is expected to run a custom SoC developed by Meta according to expert Brad Lynch. Though if these plans fall through we could instead see them relying on a solution from Qualcomm such as an XR3 chip, for example. We expect that the Oculus Quest 3 or Meta Quest 3 will retain all of the features that the two previous Quest headsets have, in addition to throwing in a couple of tricks of its own. With the Quest 2 now having a 120Hz refresh rate, this appears to be a good sweet spot for the headset to hit in, though some solutions with 240Hz are being tested by certain display manufacturers, it might just be too much power for whatever SoC that meta is putting into the Quest 3. 240Hz is a lot of frames, so it will require an incredibly powerful GPU to run.
However, we’ve heard via the rumors from expert Brad Lynch, that the Oculus Quest 3 may be using a uOLED display, which will be a huge upgrade over the current LCD panels present in the Quest 2. uOLED is a more advanced form of OLED, which will make for better color reproduction, accuracy, and much more brightness, all the while being slightly more economical due to the way that an OLED panel works.
Additionally, Mark Zuckerberg has previously spoken about his desire to put eye-tracking and face tracking into their next headsets, so it’s likely that we will see this in some form with the Quest 3, whenever it might be announced.
“One of the things I’m really excited about for future versions is getting eye tracking and face tracking in because if you’re really excited about social presence you want to make sure the device has all the sensors to really kind of animate realistic avatars so you can communicate well.“
Oculus Quest 3 price
We expect the Oculus Quest 3 to come with a price tag of $299 / £299 / €299. This is because we have a clear trend thanks to the lowest price point of previous devices, with both the original Quest and Quest 2 launching at this price point. It’s clear that Meta wants to get as many people as possible through their doors, so with the hardware, they may be subsidizing the cost in order to get more people through the door to make VR development on the platform used for most people.
Mark Zuckerberg has expressly stated that they want 10 million users on the platform, a goal which they recently passed in late 2021. So, will Meta be rushing to subsidize headsets to get more users onto the platform when the Quest 3 arrives? Only time can answer that particular question. We’ll be sure to update this page if we hear anything expressly different regarding the next-generation headset’s pricing.
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