Facebook’s Oculus division recently announced that its upcoming Quest 3 VR headset will be affordably priced and accessible for many users. This most likely means that it will be priced similarly to the current Oculus Quest 2, which has a base model price of $399.99 / £399.99 / AU$629.99 and a 256GB model of $429.99 / £429.99 / AU$719.99. However, it will not likely be offered at the original launch price of £299 / $299 / AU$479.
Despite the good news, the Oculus division’s VR business isn’t doing too well. Meta’s Reality Labs division reported a $4 billion loss for Q1 2023, compared to a $2.9 billion loss in Q2 2022. Meta attributes this to a few different factors, such as severance payments and low sales of the Quest 2. Moreover, Meta’s wider “Family of Apps” only posted $11.2 billion, and may strain Oculus in the future if its other projects prove more profitable.
Meta is a computer and VR technology company, founded in 2012 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Their aim is to create powerful machines, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI), to help all types of users create, understand and share digital content. Mark Zuckerberg is the CEO of Meta, and their recent investor call saw the triple down commitment to the Oculus Quest 3 being affordable.
While the Oculus Quest 2 is one of the best VR headsets on the market, Meta’s Quest Pro headset goes a step further, with additional RAM and a better chipset, as well as exclusive features such as full-color mixed reality, face and eye tracking, among others. Full-color passthrough for mixed reality is coming soon to the Quest 3, but for now, only the Pro model has it. Meta still remains gung-ho about their plans for a metaverse, the pressing question is whether their enthusiasm will continue if it continues to post losses.
