Roblox has done very well on Quest. When it launched on the standalone VR platform back in July, it managed to break one million downloads in its first five days, essentially making the online game the hottest social VR platform currently available on Quest. Now Roblox has also showered attendees at its annual developer conference this past weekend with free Quest Pros.
Despite being in direct competition with Meta’s Horizon Worlds social VR platform, there doesn’t seem to be any bad blood over the explosive growth of Roblox on Quest.
A message was sent to attendees at RDC23 this past weekend, stating that Meta is footing the bill to provide a heap of free Quest Pros, its $1,000 mixed reality standalone.
“The news is out! We want to give a special thanks to our partner meta. They have offered to provide all RDC23 attendees with Meta Quest Pro headsets to help you create the best Roblox experiences for VR,” the message reads.
Developers didn’t have to wait long, as they collected their free Quest Pros on site at RDC23.
During the RDC 2023 keynote, Baszucki also revealed that Roblox now features “over 50,000 experiences that are ready right now on Meta Quest.”
Roblox is currently available on the Quest platform via App Lab, however the company says it’s set for its “full” release on Quest sometime in September. Baszucki didn’t specify when, although it’s a good bet that the popular social platform will be a launch day title on Quest 3, which could come as early as September 27th during Connect, Meta’s annual developer conference.
The company also announced Roblox is headed to PlayStation in October, however it’s not clear if that will include PSVR or PSVR 2 support as well.
In late July, Meta introduced a hero shooter called ‘Super Rumble’ to Horizon Worlds, aiming to improve user retention on its social VR platform with the promise of higher quality first-party content. Now Meta released its second big anchor minigame on Horizon Worlds, a co-op adventure game called ‘Citadel’.
Citadel is what Meta calls a “rogue-lite action-adventure puzzle platformer FPS,” offering up both solo and co-op play.
Here’s how Meta describes the action:
Combining combat, puzzle-solving, and skillful gameplay, each room in Citadel gives players a new challenge to overcome. With numerous hidden secrets to uncover across 30 rooms, Citadel offers a wealth of content to explore. And after completing the game in Casual mode, those up for an additional challenge can take on Veteran mode for an even greater sense of achievement (and additional bragging rights).
As you infiltrate the citadel, find hidden relics, and eliminate enemy forces, you’ll unlock weapons and rewards and earn credit to buy new armor with unique stats to upgrade your hit points, number of lives, and speed. Mix and match helmets and torso armors at will to fully customize your gameplay experience.
Stocking Horizon Worlds with higher quality content has only been one piece of Meta’s user retention puzzle. Back in April, the company announced it was set to officially open the platform to kids ages 13+. Meta has also recently begun a closed beta for Android users, opening the platform to non-VR devices for the first time.
The company says it’s hoping to open Horizon Worlds to iOS devices and standard web browsers too at some point, which could help the platform gain greater traction amid some already fairly fierce competition. This comes as Meta opened Quest up the online gaming powerhouse Roblox, joining popular social VR platforms Rec Room, VRChat, and Gym Class on the Quest platform.
Instead of taking you right to your library of installed apps, Meta is making yet another perplexing change to the Quest landing page in v57.
Since the earliest days of Meta’s VR platform, the company has been seemingly obsessed with not putting your library of VR apps front-and-center.
Instead the first thing you see when you put on a headset from the company, or launch its companion smartphone app, is some kind of dynamic ‘feed’ with content you weren’t looking for in the first place.
The Ever Changing ‘Explore’ Page
For a long time when putting Quest on your head Meta made you look at ‘Explore’, an algorithmically-curated assortment of disparate content that was not your library of installed apps.
The current Explore landing page | Photo by Road to VR
Seemingly forever unhappy that people don’t love the Explore page, Meta has constantly reimagined it over the years, changing the layout what seems like every six months. I swear every time I’m finally used to it, it changes.
And once again, it will change.
In the newest Quest v57 update Meta is replacing the Explore landing page with a new and freshly confusing ‘Horizon Feed’, which is also not your library of installed apps.
Sensibly, you might think the Horizon Feed would contain only content from Horizon Worlds, acting as a sort of portal for you to jump into the company’s miniverse. But no, apparently in Horizon Feed you’ll find all manner of games, apps, and of course, Reels!
The new Horizon Feed landing page | Image courtesy Meta
Yes, Reels… the company’s short-form 2D video content that’s designed for quick and casual viewing on a smartphone. Certainly when I put on my headset that’s what I want to see—not my library of installed apps.
Below the Fold
Even the headset’s companion smartphone app, the ‘Meta Quest’ app, doesn’t want to make it easy to access your library of installed apps. Instead, the first thing you see when you launch the app is a smattering of algorithmically-curated content—a feed of course—that you weren’t looking for when you put your headset on in the first place.
Did you know that you can actually remotely launch VR apps on Quest right from the smartphone app? It’s incredibly convenient.
Or it could be, but most people don’t even know that’s possible because to even find your library of installed apps you need to launch the smartphone app, click ‘Menu’ (the last option on the toolbar), then scroll down below the fold to finally find ‘My Library’. Counting from the top of the page, it’s the 17th item down the list of Menu items. It has moved progressively further and further down the page down the years.
Those apps you hand-picked, bought, and installed? Oh yeah, they’re down here on the last page.
Literally ‘Parental Supervision’ and ‘Help and Support’ are placed higher on the list than your library of installed apps.
Does Meta really think that Parental Supervision (something which doesn’t even apply to many users), and Help and Support (how often do you think people need help for this product), should be easier to reach than the user’s library of installed apps?
Feed Me
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Meta has an obsession with algorithmically-curated feeds. It’s the thing that defines the company’s core products (ie: Facebook, Instagram), and small changes to their feed algorithm can have major influence over how long people stay on those platforms and how much they engage.
But here’s the core problem with Meta’s feed obsession. While casual and even mindless scrolling is the norm on smartphones—devices which can be engaged and disengaged with in a matter of seconds—this couldn’t be further from the truth for VR headsets.
Anyone putting on a VR headset already has a damn good reason to bother putting it on in the first place.
They already know what they want to do; getting between them and that thing is just compromising the user experience. If you want to hit them with a feed, do it after they’re done with the thing they intended to do in the first place. And while you’re at it… maybe instead of hiding their library of installed apps—you know, the content they hand-picked and paid for—why not make it easier for the user to launch them in the first place so it’s easier for them to return?
Now of course people at Meta are reading this and saying ‘we’ve got all these stats that show that people really click on the stuff in the feed!’ I’m sure you do… and it’s because that’s the thing you’re constantly putting in front of their face.
Metrics will lead you astray if you aren’t measuring the right things. You’d better believe that friction—the process of putting on the headset and getting to the thing you actually want to do—is and has long been one of VR’s biggest issues. If that’s not what you’re optimizing for (these feeds certainly aren’t) then you’re just crippling the overall user experience.
It’s the people that don’t come back to the headset that you should be most carefully observing, not looking to see if you can steer someone to a different piece of content after they’ve already decided to put the headset on.
Vision Pro shows your apps right when you put on the headset… how novel | Image courtesy Apple
Standing in stark contrast to Meta’s approach is Apple Vision Pro. When you put on the headset, what’s the very first thing you see? Your library of installed apps.
There’s a rumor going around that Nintendo is making a VR headset in partnership with Google. The rumor is still unconfirmed, but when the world’s oldest extant gaming company finally thinks it’s time to make a dedicated XR device, you know it’s going to be something special. Having seen how far the technology has come though, it raises a question: why hasn’t Nintendo made a VR headset yet?
Nintendo basically has a singular MO, and it does it well: create broadly accessible hardware to serve as a vehicle for its exclusive swath of family friendly games. Ok, it’s more complicated than that, but it’s a good starting point to understand why Nintendo hasn’t made a proper VR headset yet, and probably won’t for some time yet to come.
Wait. Didn’t Nintendo have that Virtual Boy thing in the ’90s? And what about Labo VR for Switch? Those were VR headsets, right? Yes, and no. Or rather, no and kind of (in that order). I’ll get to those in a bit.
In short, the reason Nintendo hasn’t made a real VR platform like Meta Quest has a lot to do with risk aversion, since the company generally prefers to wait until technologies are more mature and have proven market potential. Over the years, Nintendo has also become increasingly reliant on big singular projects which, while not always exactly cutting-edge, have allowed it to comfortably exist outside of the PlayStation and Xbox binary.
Lateral Thinking with ‘Withered’ Technology
Much of Nintendo’s market strategy can be attributed to Gunpei Yokoi, the prolific Nintendo designer best known for pioneering the company’s handheld segment. Yokoi is credited with designing Nintendo’s first handheld, Game & Watch, which at its 1980 launch made use of the cheap and abundant liquid crystal displays and 4-bit microcontrollers initially conceived for calculators. Among many other accomplishments, Yokoi is credited with designing Gameboy, creating the D-pad, and producing both Metroid and Kid Icarus. His last project before leaving the company in 1996: Virtual Boy. More on that later.
Yokoi’s career at Nintendo spanned 31 years, covering its transformation from the then nearly century-old Japanese playing card company to worldwide video gaming powerhouse. His philosophy, mentioned in his Japan-only book ‘Gunpei Yokoi Game Hall’ (横井軍平ゲーム館), sums up the sort of thinking that vaulted Nintendo to the world stage; Yokoi coined the phrase “lateral thinking with withered technology,” outlining the company’s strategy of using mature technology which is both cheap and well understood, and then finding novel and fun ways of applying it to games. That’s basically been the case from Game & Watch all the way to Switch and Switch Lite.
And it’s not just handhelds though. Nintendo consoles don’t tend to focus on cutting-edge specs either (as any former Wii owners can attest). For Nintendo console owners across the years, it’s more about being able to play games from a host of recognizable franchises such as Mario, Zelda, Smash Bros, Pokémon, Pikmin, and Animal Crossing. Since the success of Wii, it’s also been about creating new types of games centered around novel input schemes, like how the Wiimote lets you bowl in Wii Sports, or how Joy-Cons let you grove on-the-go in Just Dance. In short, Nintendo is really good at serving people with what they’re already used to and baking in novelty that owners can engage with or equally ignore.
Virtual Boy Failure, Labo VR Experiment
When Nintendo sticks to its principles, we usually get a DS, Switch, Gameboy, Wii, Game Boy Advance, 3DS, NES, SNES, Game & Watch, Nintendo 64—10 of the top 20 bestselling video game platforms in history. When they don’t, we get Virtual Boy.
Accounts hold that Yokoi was rushed to finish up work on Virtual Boy so the company could focus on the launch of Nintendo 64, which is partially why it failed. Timed right at the peak of the ’90s craze, Nintendo released what essentially was no more than a 3D version of Gameboy—a 32-bit tabletop standalone console that just so happened to have stereoscopic displays, making it no more a VR headset than Nintendo 3DS. Besides relying on some objectively useless stereoscopy, being shaped like a headset, and having ‘Virtual’ in the name, that’s where the comparisons between it and virtual reality stop.
Image courtesy Evan-Amos, Wiki Commons
Note: Every time someone refers to Virtual Boy as a VR headset, or pretends to wear it like one in a YouTube thumbnail, I scream into an empty paint bucket, hoping the residual fumes will calm my nerves.
There was no head tracking, motion controllers, or even games that wouldn’t have played equally as well on a standard Gameboy. Moreover, its red monochrome displays were criticized for giving players eye strain, nausea, and headaches during gameplay. Its awkward tabletop stand also didn’t articulate enough to adjust to each user’s height, making users strain their necks to play. The nail in the coffin: it was priced at $180 at launch in 1995, just $20 less than Nintendo 64 which arrived one year later and promised to deliver true 3D graphics (something which Virtual Boy couldn’t do, despite supporting stereoscopy!).
Still, I don’t think Nintendo tied Virtual Boy’s failure to the larger failure of VR at the time, but rather recognized what happens when it innovates in the wrong direction and abandons its core principles. Nintendo’s successive handhelds focused on keeping the pocketable form-factor, and typically offered a generation or two of backwards compatibility so consumers could easily upgrade. Gameboys to follow were truly portable, and offered all of the games you wanted to play on the bus, train, plane, wherever.
But what about Nintendo Labo VR for Switch? Well, it was a pretty awesome experiment when it was first released in 2019. The DIY accessory pack made of cardboard actually got Nintendo involved in VR for the first time, and it did it with the same family friendly flair the company seems to bring to everything it does.
Image courtesy Nintendo
It’s a fun little kit that uses Joy-Cons in some unique ways, but with only a few high-quality native VR ‘taster’ experiences to play with, it’s basically a one-and-done deal that Nintendo critically hasn’t iterated on beyond its initial release despite a generally good reception from its target market.
Granted, Nintendo did provide Labo VR support for a number of first-party titles, including Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Super Mario Odyssey, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but this just provides basic 3D viewer support, and doesn’t convert these games into any sort of full VR experience.
To boot, Labo VR actually has Unity support, meaning third-party developers can create games and experiences for it; the fact is the headset and slot-in Switch form-factor just isn’t built for long-term play like a standalone or PC VR headset though. It’s front-heavy, doesn’t have a strap, and just isn’t the basis of a modern VR platform. It’s a toy more than a platform.
Switching It Up with One Big Platform
The big question is: when? When will Nintendo feel like VR is mature enough to enter in full force with something like a standalone headset, replete with a host of beloved Nintendo franchise games? If past performance predicts future outcomes, it’s pretty unlikely we’ll be seeing such a device in the near term.
The company has spent the better part of the last decade recovering from the failure of Wii U, the company’s least successful video game console to date (next to Virtual Boy). Going headfirst into the XR niche soon with a dedicated hardware release doesn’t seem plausible given how focused the company has become on melding both handheld and console product development with Switch.
Fun Labo VR adds-on aside, Nintendo has expressed some skepticism of VR in the past. Speaking to TIME, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto said in 2014 that VR just wasn’t the sort of broadly accessible player experience the company was trying to crack with Wii U:
“When you think about what virtual reality is, which is one person putting on some goggles and playing by themselves kind of over in a corner, or maybe they go into a separate room and they spend all their time alone playing in that virtual reality, that’s in direct contrast with what it is we’re trying to achieve with Wii U. And so I have a little bit of uneasiness with whether or not that’s the best way for people to play.”
Granted, the technology has changed a great deal since 2014, the same year Oculus Rift DK2 came out. With mixed reality passthrough becoming a standard on standalone headsets such as Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro, Nintendo would be crazy not keep tabs on the technology, albeit with same hesitation it has mostly shown in the past with its adoption of cutting-edge technology.
Nintendo VR patent | Image courtesy USPTO, via Levelup
In fact, the company is actively creating patents around mixed reality systems that focus on cooperative gameplay using players both in and out of a headset. Above is one such patent from 2022 showing a multiplayer game based on some sort of proposed tabletop platformer.
Unlike a lot of the tech companies out there trying to spin up multiple products and maintain large, interconnected platforms, Nintendo’s main MO is to gamble on one big thing that will probably come with additional functions and a few input quirks. Whether that’s some sort of additional headset peripheral or not… you never know. In the end, the more inclusive nature of mixed reality may change some minds over at Nintendo, although you can bet whatever comes next from the Japanese gaming company will be another experiment, or similar add-on that uses mature hardware in a new and different way.
– – — – –
What is certain is Nintendo isn’t in any rush, as both hardware and software sales of traditional games still far outweigh VR games. Still, you can’t help but wonder what a Nintendo headset might look like, and what a full-throated XR release from Nintendo would do for generations of kids (and adults) to come.
MyDearest, the Japan-based studio behind the Tokyo Chronos VR series, revealed it’s next VR game, a team shooter called Brazen Blaze.
The studio describes Brazen Blaze as a “3v3 smack & shoot VR action with a heavy focus on close quarter melee combat.”
You’ll be able to “choose from a variety of characters with unique skills to destroy whatever lies in your path to achieve victory,” the game’s Steam page reads.
As seen in the reveal trailer, Brazen Blaze equips players with super-powerful gauntlets that let you dash through the air and destroy buildings, punch your enemy into space, and offers up some unique weapons to do things like shoot mini-missiles, activate large gravity fields, heal friends, etc.
There’s still plenty to learn about Brazen Blaze before its 2024 launch; MyDearest has only said so far that it’s targeting SteamVR headsets, where it will hold the game’s initial closed alpha. The studio’s head of oversees marketing & producer Alberto Moreno however confirmed in the game’s Discord that “Quest 2 can run the game,” which could mean we’re getting a version for Quest 2 and Quest 3 too.
In the meantime, you can request access to the game’s alpha test by joining the Brazen Blaze Discord (invite link), which will be open for signups up until September 24th. Announcements of who gets into the alpha are due on September 28th, with the closed alpha set to take place between October 6th – 8th.
Bigscreen announced it’s now shipping Beyond, the company’s thin and light PC VR headset unveiled earlier this year.
Created by the same team behind theBigscreen Beta VR app, Bigscreen Beyond is a tethered PC VR headset that uses Valve’s SteamVR tracking standard. Priced at $1,000, the headset makes for an interesting value proposition for users already hooked into the SteamVR hardware ecosystem, offering up a slim design thanks to the inclusion of pancake lenses and micro-OLEDs. Check out the specs at the end of the article.
Now Bigscreen says it’s started shipping Beyond, with packages going out daily to customers in the United States; international shipments are said to begin in “mid to late Q4.”
“Since launching in February, demand was stronger than expected and we’ve got an overwhelming amount of headsets to build! We’ve spent the past few months ramping up production in order to ship tens of thousands of units in the coming months ahead,” the company says.
To meet demand, Bigscreen says it’s hiring more engineering and production staff for its LA-based factory, and meeting with overseas manufacturing partners in China to ensure production proceeds “without a hitch.”
There’s also a bigger international expansion on the horizon. In addition to taking preorders from customers in the US, UK, most of Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, the company is also set to expand preorders to Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The company says it also plans to sell in South Korea, Israel, “and more soon.”
Check out our hands-on with Beyond back in March, where we tested out every aspect of the headset, including its display clarity, brightness, custom ergonomics, and got to grips with its next-gen form-factor.
Resolution Games revealed its popular tabletop dungeon-crawling RPG Demeo now features hand-tracking support on Quest 2 and Quest Pro with its latest mixed reality update. It also includes a few new features to its previously released MR mode that are aiming to appeal to both future owners of Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro.
Ahead of Demeo’s confirmed launch-day release on Quest 3 sometime this Fall, Resolution Games announced it’s now pushing out the game’s Mixed Reality 2.0 update, which is available starting today on the Quest 2 and Quest Pro.
Added to Demeo last Fall, the game’s mixed reality mode lets players take the gameboard out of the virtual world and into their living rooms. Now, in the game’s Mixed Reality 2.0 update, players can put down their controllers and use their hands to pick up miniatures, play cards, and roll the die.
The update also adds two new MR features: co-location to optimize local mixed reality multiplayer, and decorations (including candles and posters) that can be placed to set the mood.
Notably, the studio says the original Quest won’t be receiving the Mixed Reality 2.0 update, but instead is getting a separate final update, bringing ongoing support for the game on Quest 1 to a close. Cross-play support for Quest 1 has also been discontinued.
Demeo Battles, the game’s upcoming PvP mode, is set to feature a similar MR mode on Quest 2, Quest 3, and Quest Pro when it launches later this year, Resolution Games says.
At the moment, Resolution Games says it’s currently focusing half the studio’s workload on the creation of MR projects. The studio tells Road to VR it has “multiple mixed reality titles actively in development across a number of devices for 2024 and beyond, including several with dedicated controller-free play.”
Additionally, the studio confirmed Demeo is in active development for Apple Vision Pro for “fully virtual as well as mixed reality gameplay,” with a flatscreen version planned for release on Mac.
Codemasters, the EA studio behind the DiRT Rally franchise, announced that is next off-road racing title WRC is set to include post-launch VR support for its PC release.
The game is set to land on multiple platforms on November 3rd, including PS 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via the EA App, Epic Store, and Steam, however VR support isn’t planned to be a launch day feature.
It’s not certain when the VR mode is coming to PC, although what is certain: it’s not coming to PSVR 2.
“Exclusive to PC. Feel the pure adrenaline of rally from the driver’s seat. Coming Post-launch.”
The studio also released the game’s initial reveal trailer, showing off some of the ability to design and drive your dream rally car thanks to the inclusion of Builder mode.
Codemasters says WRC also lets you “race and overcome recent events alongside real-world highlights and nostalgic throwbacks in Moments mode, or battle the elements across dirt, snow, and asphalt in the pursuit of the perfect run.”
It’s been nearly five years since we played the Border Bots VR demo, then called ‘Border Patrol’, which first introduced the game’s undoubtedly Papers, Please (2013)-inspired border guard simulation. Now the full VR game has an official launch date on PSVR 2 and SteamVR headsets.
Border Bots VR is coming to PSVR 2 and SteamVR on September 28th, with a Meta Quest 2 release slated to arrive early next year, the developers say.
Created by Team17 Digital and Paw Print Games in association with vTime Games, Border Bots VR tasks you with some pretty standard stuff for a border patrol agent: analyzing documents for discrepancies, checking robots for unauthorized modifications, confiscating forbidden items, etc.
You’ll also get to power up with an array of handy gadgets such as a 3D printer, barcode scanner, and contraband detector as you rise up the corporate ladder.
The studios also released a new gameplay trailer that gives a first glimpse at life in the game’s robotic future.
You can wishlist Border Bots VR on Steam and PSVR 2 today.
Waltz of the Wizard (2019), the single-player spellcasting experience for SteamVR, Quest, and the original PSVR, is bringing its magical exploration and dungeon crawling to PSVR 2 next month.
Waltz of the Wizard started out life as a casual exploration game that put you at the top of a very Hogwarts-inspired castle spire. There, you combine arcane ingredients into a boiling cauldron with the help of an ancient talking skull, unleashing spells upon a fully interactive and mysterious world using technologies like voice interaction and gestures.
Introduced later in the ‘Natural Magic’ expansion, Waltz of the Wizard essentially tacked on a pretty substantial dungeon crawling game that tasks you with mastering arcane spells so you can also take on a dungeon of baddies.
New to the list of features is the addition of PSVR 2’s eye-tracking as an input method. We haven’t seen exactly what the studio has up its sleeve there, but it seems like it will at very least allow you to visually select baddies before blasting them to bits with your magical spells. There’s also set to be asymmetric co-op on PS5, letting you team up with a non-VR player to let you take on dungeons.
The studio says its PSVR 2 version includes:
Cutting-edge voice, eyes- and gesture interaction abilities
Large campaign with storyline, combat and challenges
Hundreds of voice interactions (English)
Infinite level generation mode for endless fun
Eye-tracking interactions with characters and magic
Dozens of unique haptic effects (rumble, trigger, head)
Team up with a friend in asymmetric co-op!
Aldin Dynamics says Waltz of the Wizard is coming to PSVR 2 October 3rd, 2023. You can wishlist it on the PlayStation Store here.
Meta Quest 3, the company’s upcoming $500 standalone mixed reality headset, is probably going to get a big info dump at Connect 2023 later this month. It appears an ecommerce site in Europe has leaked some of the available accessories and prices.
As first reported by MIXED, Netherlands-based online vendor UnboundXR.eu listed a number of Quest 3 accessories and prices ahead of their official availability:
Meta Quest 3 Silicone Face Interface (Black) for €49.99
Meta Quest 3 Carrying Case for €79.99
Meta Quest 3 Elite Strap with Battery for €149.99
Meta Quest 3 Charging Dock for €149.99
Listings for everything but the Quest 3 carrying case have since been removed from the site.
Notably, those prices include value added tax (VAT), which in the Netherlands is 21%. It’s not clear exactly how that will look in US pricing, however when comparing previous accessory prices in the EU, US prices may look something like this:
Meta Quest 3 Silicone Face Interface (Black) for $39.99
Meta Quest 3 Carrying Case for $59.99
Meta Quest 3 Elite Strap with Battery for $119.99
Meta Quest 3 Charging Dock for $119.99
Granted, that’s only some healthy specualtion, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
If Quest 3 is anything like Quest 2 in terms of accessories though, there are sure to be many more to choose from, including prescription lenses, left and right replacement controllers, and a version Elite Strap without the built-in external battery.
Speaking of Elite Straps, if you were hoping to save a buck by reusing a Quest 2 Elite Strap (if it isn’t already shattered to pieces), a leak posted by X user ‘VR Panda’ potentially reveals that the Quest 3 attachment point is notably smaller than Quest 2’s, meaning you’ll need to buy a new Elite headstrap for Quest 3.
Whatever the case, we’re sure to learn more soon at Connect 2023, which takes place September 27th – 28th at Meta’s Menlo Park, California headquarters.
Meta is reportedly teaming up with South Korean tech giant LG Electronics to offer up competition to the Apple’s forthcoming Vision Pro mixed reality headset, which is slated to arrive sometime in 2024.
South Korea’s Maekyung (Korean) is reporting on two new Meta headsets: a low-cost Quest model that will be priced at “less than $200” coming in 2024, and a high-priced model in a joint venture with LG in 2025, which is supposedly set to take on Apple Vision Pro.
The report maintains the name of the Meta/LG headset will be ‘Meta Quest 4 Pro’.
Mass production of the so-called Quest 4 Pro is allegedly being handled by LG Electronics, and LG Display, with LG Innotek and LG Energy Solution supplying parts.
Provided the report is true, it seems some very distinct battle lines are being drawn. Samsung announced earlier this year that it was working with Qualcomm and Google to develop an Android-powered XR device, which may also be positioned to compete against Apple and Meta.
