The games Meta is lining up for Quest 3 and beyond are likely the cornerstone of the company’s approach in VR gaming in the coming years.
Meta’s core customer-base of VR gamers had very few announcements to excite them at Connect this week. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Assassin’s Creed VR were nowhere to be seen and the company had just one major game reveal — Iron Man VR coming soon to Quest 2. The reason there was so little gaming news is because even though the $1500 Quest Pro plays the same games as Quest 2 it isn’t really designed for immersive gaming. It’s designed for Workrooms and is the first headset in a new product category from Meta aimed more at mixed reality and changing the way people get their jobs done.
Quest 3 is in the works, though, and will be priced in the same range as Quest 2. What’s more, it is likely to feature a next-generation processor from Qualcomm — the XR2 Gen 2 — which could have more than double the GPU power of the current chip driving Quest 2. Meta’s eight VR-focused game studios could do a lot with that extra power. Notably, not one of them has formally announced a new game since acquisition.
To recap Meta owns:
- Beat Saber developer Beat Games (highest selling VR game in the world)
- Asgard’s Wrath developer Sanzaru Games (one of the most graphically impressive VR games ever made)
- Echo VR developer Ready At Dawn Studios (one of the most popular team-based VR sports)
- Onward developer Downpour Interactive (leading team-based first person VR shooter)
- Population One developer BigBox VR (large-scale battle royale that’s soon-to-get a sandbox mode akin to Fortnite)
- Wilson’s Heart developer Twisted Pixel
- Iron Man VR developer Camouflaj
- Resident Evil 4 developer Armature
That’s a wide range of genre expertise in VR design spread across everything from single-player games to multiplayer and even large-scale battle royale. Taken altogether, Meta looks set to have both the talent and processing power to take Quest 3 to levels far exceeding what’s been possible so far.
Of course, platform-building tech giants don’t have a great track record in gaming, with Google’s Stadia effort shutting down, Apple disappointing gamers for decades, and forgettable efforts from Amazon. Meta isn’t playing the same game as those companies, however, with a product tuned for unmatched immersion paired with affordability. In 2021, gaming industry veteran and long-time Oculus team member Jason Rubin moved into a role on the executive team at Meta leading “Metaverse Content” and he’s likely leading this charge into the next generation of Quest hardware. His role near the top of Meta’s management structure highlights the seriousness of the effort at the company.
Meta also renewed partnerships with some key platforms this week. Creative commons-licensed content from Epic Games’ Sketchfab should be on the way in Horizon Worlds while Microsoft is bringing its Xbox cloud streaming service for 2D games to the Quest platform. While that’s not Fortnite or Minecraft on Quest headsets, it’s certainly a start.
We reached out to Meta to see if they had any additional comment and a representative suggested tuning into the company’s next Gaming Showcase in 2023 for gaming news.
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