Meta is considering a sequel to Quest 3, which releases this week, and plans to take cues from Apple’s Vision Pro as it races to bring its VR technology into the mainstream. This is according to today’s Mark Gurman power on newspaper for bloomberg, who writes that the company’s Quest headset marketing plans have changed in response to Apple’s Vision Pro announcement earlier this year. Part of the plan is to release a VR headset without controllers next year to reduce costs.
Gurman says that a person within Meta told him that the company was in a “‘fear of Apple’ mode,” comparing it to the mobile phone industry just before the launch of the iPhone. He writes that the company’s shift from a heavy focus on the metaverse to an emphasis on the headset’s practical uses — gaming and productivity — is a direct response to Apple’s pitch for the Vision Pro. You could argue that Apple’s headset is more practical than an immersive virtual world, even if it doesn’t cost quite as much.
Meta’s roadmap includes making its next headset, codenamed Ventura, even cheaper — the Quest 3 already costs 15 percent less than the Vision Pro — and more comfortable without sacrificing screen resolution. And apparently, according to Gurman, Meta is also considering eliminating controller bundling to help with this, giving customers the ability to either just use hand gestures or purchase a controller separately.
Apple and Meta are ultimately after different markets, but right now, the existing VR headset market is largely just “people who want a VR headset” – you know, early adopters. Meta is trying to figure out how things will change when the market really grows, and to gain a foothold in it, the company needs a different product, or it risks taking the Quest down the path of feature phones. Picks up.