Meta Quest 3: New VR headset to be released in 2023
Mark Zuckerberg confirms in a conference call with investors that a new Quest headset for consumers will be released in 2023.
Yesterday, Meta presented its latest quarterly results. Mark Zuckerberg incidentally announced the "launch of the next generation of our consumer Quest headset". This probably means Meta Quest 3.
The announcement follows the October 25 launch of Meta Quest Pro: the first device in a new premium product line aimed at developers and enterprises. Meta Quest Pro will cost $1,500, while the price range for Meta Quest 3 will be between $300 and $500. Mark Zuckerberg has already confirmed this.
At the beginning of October, CAD blueprints of the Meta Quest 3 or a prototype of the same leaked, which provide information about the planned technology. According to these plans, Meta will fully rely on Mixed Reality, similar to Meta Quest Pro. Meta Quest 3 is also said to be equipped with a new chip that could more than double the computing power.
Reality Labs: Rising investments, falling revenues
Meta's balance sheets, meanwhile, disappointed once again. Revenue fell 4 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, while expenses rose 19 percent. The fact that Meta was able to improve user numbers for its social apps then didn't help matters: the stock continued to plummet in after-hours trading. Currently, the shares are still worth just over 100 US dollars; in September 2021, they were worth 378 US dollars.
Meta also reported declining revenues at Reality Labs, Meta's VR and AR division. Revenue fell to $285 million in the third quarter. That's 49 percent less than a year earlier. Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner cited weaker sales of the Meta Quest 2 as the reason. Meta raised the price of the hardware from $299 to $399 for the base model in August due to rising production costs, according to the company.
While revenues fell, Reality Labs' capital expenditures and losses rose, with investments up 24 percent to $4 billion and losses up 39 percent to nearly $3.7 billion.
The third quarter 2022 financial summary. I have highlighted the Reality Labs data. | Image: Meta
Zuckerberg sticks to Metaverse vision
Meta was already making $9.4 billion in losses with Reality Labs in 2022, and in 2023 losses are expected to continue to "grow significantly," according to Zuckerberg.
In a long monologue, Mark Zuckerberg justified the investments in future technologies and narrowed down research and development to four areas:
- the Horizon social platform and avatar technology,
- VR headsets for entertainment and productivity,
- AR headsets for everyday life,
- and neural interfaces that translate brain signals into computer commands (see EMG bracelet).
"I get that a lot of people might disagree with this investment. But from what I can tell, I think that this is going to be a very important thing, and I think it would be a mistake for us to not focus on any of these areas, which I think are going to be fundamentally important to the future," Zuckerberg said.
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