What the new Meta Quest 3 means for the future of XR development?

Meta (formerly Facebook) launched its newest consumer VR headset in the past week, and we at Fourcher Technologies have some thoughts! Coming in at a bargain $500, the Quest 3 is packed full of features that will shape the future of the VR market.

The context: For a decade, VR was a dead gimmick. Despite huge year-over-year improvements in technology, it never quite grasped the proper feel of a common consumer product like a smartphone or a TV. That was until the Meta Quest 2 launched in 2020, which became one of the most popular full-featured VR headsets overnight. Its success was fully because of its no-nonsense feature set: decent battery life, easy-to-use controllers, built-in tracking, and an App Store to support it all. Although this was a huge success for VR, it still was a passive device: the market was aimless and asleep, and the sleeping giant of Apple was about to wake it up.

On June 5th, 2023, Apple announced the most advanced piece of consumer hardware ever: the Apple Vision Pro. We covered this piece of hardware in a previous newsletter (you can find those on our website www.fourchertech.com. Apple’s vision (sorry for the pun) was a world where mixed reality headsets would augment everyday experiences seamlessly, and in a social context. This was opposed to the solo-gaming focused VR infrastructure that Meta was boasting. A few months later, Meta announced the Quest 3, with a focus on mixed reality and business-focused tools. They had bent the knee. The plan Meta had for VR gaming is officially dead, and Apple is the new king of XR, dictating the future of spatial computation to its competition.

What this means for the future of VR:

We already knew mixed reality was the future, and Meta’s latest capitulation to Apple is further evidence that this was the correct analysis. That’s why we are developing AR and XR-focused dementia and memory care experiences at Fourcher Technologies. We are preparing for the near-future today by working with experts to craft the best care tools for this growing yet neglected population.

Comment below if you are interested in getting involved in

our VR dementia care program!