I got pretty excited when Meta unveiled its Quest 3 this week, and then immediately got mad when it mentioned a couple of things about the Quest 2.
Earlier today, Meta officially announced the Quest 3. The new headset features a new design, color pass-through mixed reality, and some big performance upgrades. Coming in at a starting price of $499, the company says it will be released this fall. Of course, Meta announced the new headset today in order to build hype before Apple reveals its own mixed-reality headset next week at WWDC.
In addition to giving us a first look at the Quest 3, the company also announced some changes for the Quest 2, its current generation consumer-focused headset. The first (and here’s where I got pissed off) is that it will be once again dropping the price of the 128GB model down to $299. As someone who just bought the Quest 2 a few months ago after they raised the price to $399, I’m not too happy with Mark Zuckerberg right now. Why the heck are VR headset prices fluctuating like Tesla cars right now?!
As if to throw a bone to all of us who paid the higher price, the company thankfully announced that they are releasing a software update for both the Quest 2 and Quest Pro that will result in a pretty substantial performance boost.
But that’s not all! In an upcoming software update, we’re updating the Quest 2 and Quest Pro GPU and CPU. Quest 2 and Pro will see an up-to 26% CPU performance increase with an up-to 19% GPU speed increase for Quest 2 and 11% for Quest Pro. As developers take advantage of these changes, you can expect smoother gameplay, a more responsive UI, and richer content on both headsets. And we’re enabling Dynamic Resolution Scaling for both Quest 2 and Quest Pro, so games and apps can take advantage of increased pixel density without dropping frames.
Of course, all of these changes are being announced since Apple is set to reveal its own mixed-reality headset next week at WWDC. The headset, which is expected to cost a whopping $3,000, is expected to showcase a future of VR and AR that has not yet been technically achieved.
