My predictions for Meta Connect 2023: Meta Quest 3 and…

Tomorrow is the day the Meta Connect starts! Every year I like to play the speculation game about what to expect from there… and every year I predict a lot of things wrong (like that year that I said that the Quest Link was not going to happen… shame on me). This is a tradition I can’t skip this year, too.

I’m swamped with work so I do have not much time to write a long post… but I still want to play the prediction game with you! Below you will find my expectations for tomorrow’s event and I can’t wait to read yours in the comment section or on my social media channels!

Meta Quest 3

This is easy. Meta is going to launch the Meta Quest 3, its first truly mixed-reality headset. The Quest 3 will have the following specifications:

• Resolution (per-eye): 2064 x 2208
• Display Type: LCD
• Refresh Rate: 120Hz
• Lens type: Pancake
• Processor: Snapdragon XR2 Gen2
• RAM: 8GB-12GB (not clear from the leaks)
• Battery Life: 2–3 hours
• Field of View: 97° horizontal, 93° vertical
• IPD Adjust: hardware-based. Eye relief is also supported
• Audio: integrated
• Weight: 509g
• Storage: 128GB or 512GB
• Connectivity: USB, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
• Tracking: inside-out
• Depth sensor: available
• Mixed Reality: full-RGB cameras for color passthrough

The base (128GB) version of the Meta Quest 3 is going to be released for $499, while the higher storage version (512 GB) is coming for $599-$649 (not clear from the leaks). Considering the leaks on Amazon and MediaMarkt, the device will probably be available starting from October, 10th, 2023. Preorders most probably will start on the day of the Connect, so on September, 27th. Meta will also announce a few accessories for it, like a charging dock.

I forecast zero surprises related to the launch of this device… it’s the headset for which Meta has revealed the most information before the actual launch, so we already know everything about it.

I think that at least half of the keynote will be dedicated to Quest 3 and its ecosystem. Quest 3 is the device with which Meta has to give new life to a stagnating VR ecosystem, and with which Meta has to recover its credibility after the disillusionment on the metaverse and the big failure of the Quest Pro. It’s a big bet, and I think Zuck doesn’t want to make it wrong.

Mixed Reality use cases

This is the app Campfire3D, running on a Meta Quest 3 devkit.

You can see that the user is holding a Touch Plus controller (with the Oculus logo on the home button as some devkits have) confirming this.

Gives another glimpse at what we can expect from the passthrough quality. pic.twitter.com/onpWYFDMPa

— Luna (@Lunayian) September 19, 2023

Quest 3 is marketed as a true mixed-reality headset: it features a depth sensor and hi-res RGB passthrough cameras, so mixed reality is one of its main features. I bet Meta will invest a lot in promoting how Mixed Reality is the new next thing to chase in XR. And Meta will show a lot of new content coming in mixed reality for Quest 3 (some rumors were talking about 40 launch applications).

In my opinion, this part of the keynote will be crucial to understanding how much Quest 3 can be successful. Currently, mixed reality is just a nice-to-have and most Quest apps featuring it are just gimmicks. No average consumer is asking for mixed reality, and Meta will have to explain to people why they need it and what they can do with it. Use cases are going to be crucial. If Meta fails to explain this, people will just buy the cheaper Quest 2.

The use cases will be also important to understand if this device will still be a gaming console or will start migrating towards being a more general-purpose device. I bet that Meta will do the second, showing use cases also for productivity and other stuff, because gaming is proving to be just a niche for XR and mixed reality indoor games are usually not that fun.

The “Applification”

Since Meta is scared by Apple, I’m sure that Zuck will try to copy the same use cases Apple showed for its Vision Pro. I forecast an improvement to the “Infinite Office” features, and the Quest 3 will be marketed as a device that can put screens everywhere… screens where to watch movies, screens where to be productive on your laptop. Meta already has these features on Quest, but it will improve them and market them more so that Zuck can sell the device as “like the Vision Pro, but much cheaper”.

Also, I forecast much more attention to hand tracking. After the Vision Pro announcement, both Meta and Pico started giving even more attention to it, and a few days ago, the Quest runtime was updated so that the main menu became hands-first. (In fact, I hate it, because I use controllers and I find the new menu too little to read). So it’s clear that there will be more focus on the hands… which will lead in the end to the release of a headset without controllers, I think.

Games

Games are still very relevant for Meta, so I imagine we will see some updates on already announced content, like GTA San Andreas and Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, plus I predict a few new games announced on the day of the Connect. I forecast there will also be another new big game teased in partnership with some big studio (like it happened two years ago with GTA San Andreas).

Kids as one of the main target markets

Meta understood that kids are one of its biggest markets, so it is going to bet always more on them. The recently leaked tutorial that explains safety in VR to kids shows how Meta has gone from “VR shouldn’t be played by people below 13 years” to “Kids come heeeeere!”. Kids will be an important part of the strategy to sell a lot of headsets during the holiday season, so I expect that some features and some games will be announced specifically for them.

I also imagine the CEO of Roblox appearing on stage and announcing the official release of Roblox on Quest in time for the holidays. Meta gifted a Quest Pro to every participant of the Roblox annual event, and this shows how Roblox is for Meta a fundamental partner in attracting kids on its platform.

I guess that in the end there will be so many kids on Quest, that until now we complained when we found a screeching kid in VRChat, but in the future, all the screeching children will complain that there are with them in the room some millennials that don’t scream in VR.

The death of PCVR?

The Rift runtime is abandonware and Meta has already killed the customizable Rift Home. Many games now launch for PC VR just on Steam, and even a critical hit like Among Us VR is going to abandon the Rift platform in October. With the current status, the PC software, which is also various gigabytes big, has no sense to exist anymore.

I forecast Meta will announce the death of the PC Store which will be closed maybe at the end of 2024. It will transform the PC software into just a lightweight runtime to:

• Make the Quest work with the Link on SteamVR
• Use old content bought on the Rift Store
• Make developers debug the apps they are making in Unity.

Some enterprise stuff

Meta will talk about enterprise and detail the business licensing of Quest 3. Some new partnerships will be announced. Probably some big companies will talk about some important case study where they used thousands of Quest and increased their productivity.

Ray-Ban Stories 2

This is another easy prediction: at last Meta Connect, Exilor-Luxottica and Meta announced they were working on a new version of the Ray-Ban Stories, so it’s predictable they are going to launch them this year. The prediction is even confirmed by the fact that the FCC just approved a new version of the Ray-Ban Stories hardware.

The leaks talk about a model with better ergonomics, a more powerful battery, more powerful cameras, and better audio. Nothing revolutionary, but still a step forward. I think the price will stay similar to the previous model.

AR glasses

AR glasses are distant for all the major tech companies, so I don’t expect the launch of anything in this sense. But since some leaks talk about a first version of AR glasses hardware that Meta will have next year as an internal dev-kit, I expect Meta will talk more about the work it is doing in AR. We have been left with some sparse parts of the AR puzzle like Project Aria, Project Nazare, and mixed reality on Quest. I think this year they will give some more detailed information, and hopefully unveil a codename for the first devkit of next year.

Metaverse

Zuck will say the M-word and use it to show the vision of the company. He will also say that Roblox is part of that vision. But it won’t be the central stage like it was two years ago.

AI

Meta investors just want to hear about AI, so Zuck will give these bitches what they want. Probably Zuck will tease some AI assistant for Quest, or some generative AI tools that Meta is working on to automatically create worlds from a text prompt. I imagine a lot of smoke, mirrors, and “oh this will come later”, together with maybe some “copilot” feature that will come sooner.

Abrash and some research stuff

Michael Abrash will show some work with augmented reality, brain-computer interfaces, neural bracelets, spatial audio, and artificial intelligence. He will show a lot of cool stuff, and I would love to see everything. This is the part where I will feel like living in the future.

NOT John Carmack

My unscripted talks that didn’t toe the party line were no longer welcome on the big stage. I may still write some VR posts, and @boztank would probably have me back on his podcast for a review.

— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) August 26, 2023

John Carmack was the highlight of the Meta Connect for all of us techies. He was always brutally honest, and this didn’t fit much of the corporate communication of Meta, so this year he has not been invited to speak. That’s a huge pity.

Privacy

Meta representatives will repeat a lot of time the word “privacy” and will say that they care about our data. They care so much about our data that the Threads app was not available in the EU at launch because it was collecting so much data that it violated GDPR. Damn European Union, it doesn’t understand that Zuck wants our data just to care for them!

Something cringe

We need something to make memes, so… maybe some other moments with a BBQ sauce bottle on the shelf would be cool…

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And that’s it for my predictions! Let’s interact on social media tomorrow during the Connect and let’s see how many of them were correct!

(Header image by Meta)