Apple and Meta’s looming headset war

Meta took a jab at Apple this week by con­ve­nient­ly announc­ing its new Quest 3 just days before the pos­si­ble announce­ment of Apple’s much-antic­i­pat­ed new VR headset. 

The Meta Quest 3, set to be released in the fall, is appar­ent­ly lighter and less bulky than the Quest 2, with high­er-res­o­lu­tion graph­ics and more pro­cess­ing pow­er. Although its price tag is steep­er than pre­vi­ous mod­els, at $500, it’s con­sid­ered a step up because of its improved mixed-real­i­ty technology. 

Intro­duc­ing Meta Quest 3.

Com­ing this fall. Sign up for updates at: https://t.co/gt8P9KkNsd

Learn more at Meta Con­nect on Sep­tem­ber 27 – 28.#MetaQuest3 pic.twitter.com/CPFtGyNYC2

— Meta Quest (@MetaQuestVR) June 1, 2023

Instead of being immersed in a vir­tu­al world, you can play a vir­tu­al board game on your din­ing room table or dec­o­rate your liv­ing room with vir­tu­al art, accord­ing to Meta’s announce­ment. A pre­view video CEO Mark Zucker­berg post­ed on his Insta­gram shows him play­ing a mixed-real­i­ty tank game where it looks like the vehi­cles are dri­ving around the floor in front of him. More details will be revealed at the end of Sep­tem­ber at the company’s Meta Con­nect conference. 

More Meta Quest 3 via Zuck’s Insta­gram pic.twitter.com/tMTOlNT2ac

— Luna (@Lunayian) June 2, 2023

Poten­tial appli­ca­tions for the head­set are var­ied and could lev­el-up Meta’s meta­verse ambi­tions, espe­cial­ly when it comes to first-per­son shoot­er games and tools to increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. But ques­tions remain.

Although Meta has gone all-in on its VR and AR development—pouring bil­lions of dol­lars into its Real­i­ty Labs unit—its meta­verse is not the most popular—even with employees. 

Zuck has encour­aged col­leagues to spend time meet­ing and col­lab­o­rat­ing in vir­tu­al real­i­ty, but Bloomberg report­ed on Thurs­day that its employ­ees gen­er­al­ly don’t use the head­sets, and even those in the VR divi­sion were luke­warm about it. Zucker­berg has also ditched remote work recent­ly, ask­ing most employ­ees to start com­ing to the office three days a week start­ing in September. 

Per­haps the big­ger threat to Meta’s suc­cess in the space will be Apple’s new head­set, which could be announced on June 5 at its World­wide Devel­op­ers Conference.

Although details are even more lim­it­ed for Apple’s head­set, it may cost upwards of $3,000 and com­bine both vir­tu­al and mixed real­i­ty. It would be the company’s most sig­nif­i­cant new piece of hard­ware since the Apple Watch in 2015, or, a year lat­er, Air­Pods. It could cut into Meta’s sales but prob­a­bly not imme­di­ate­ly giv­en the cost difference.

Apple’s head­set, which accord­ing to Bloomberg could be called the Real­i­ty Pro or XR Pro and looks like a pair of tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced ski gog­gles made of glass, car­bon fiber, and alu­minum, report­ed­ly has two pairs of 4K res­o­lu­tion screens and can be con­trolled by both a user’s hands and eyes. 

Although Meta has a clear first-mover advan­tage, Apple has often rede­fined a prod­uct cat­e­go­ry after a com­peti­tor has entered that space. It’s also been prepar­ing for this release for near­ly a decade with a series of acqui­si­tions that could include tech used in the headset.

Apple enter­ing the VR/AR mar­ket val­i­dates the sector’s legit­i­ma­cy, and the com­pe­ti­tion could ulti­mate­ly ben­e­fit consumers.

In other news

NFT artist FEWOCiOUS, whose real name is Vic­tor Lan­glois, announced a new line of 20,000 pro­file pic­ture NFTs called Fewos that will be incor­po­rat­ed into the artists’ unre­leased vir­tu­al “FewoWorld.” The Fewos come in three types—humanoid, franken­stein, and misunderstood—with char­ac­ter­is­tics designed by hand that were lat­er dig­i­tized. The NFTs will be released in August.

Cour­tesy of Michael Oxendine

Fash­ion brand Prada’s Time­cap­sule Col­lec­tion entered its sec­ond year with the launch of its sum­mer sea­son on Thurs­day. This month’s prod­uct is a uni­sex tank top made in a bright flo­ral pat­tern, with a tri­an­gle logo on the front and the month June on the back. Each comes with an NFT and an invi­ta­tion to join Prada’s exclu­sive Crypt­ed NFT com­mu­ni­ty on Discord.

Cour­tesy of Prada

Nike’s dig­i­tal arm is team­ing up with EA Sports, cre­ator of the FIFA and Mad­den fran­chis­es, in a part­ner­ship that could see the shoe giant’s NFTs fea­tured in games. Although details were scant, in a press release Thurs­day, Nike said the part­ner­ship, will focus on “immer­sive expe­ri­ences” and “unlock brand new lev­els of cus­tomiza­tion.” It will also help Nike’s .SWOOSH NFT com­mu­ni­ty “express their per­son­al style through play.”