Meta plans to release its first pair of smart glasses with a display in 2025 alongside a neural interface smartwatch designed to control them, The Verge <\/em>has learned. Meanwhile, its first pair of full-fledged AR glasses, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has predicted will eventually be as widely used as mobile phones<\/a>, is planned for 2027.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The details were shared with thousands of employees in Meta\u2019s Reality Labs division on Tuesday during a roadmap presentation of its AR and VR efforts that was shared with The Verge<\/em>. Altogether, they show how Meta is planning to keep investing in consumer hardware after a series<\/a> of setbacks<\/a> and broader cost cutting across the company<\/a>. A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment for this story.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n With regards to the VR roadmap, employees were told that Meta\u2019s flagship Quest 3 headset coming later this year will be two times thinner, at least twice as powerful, and cost slightly more than the $400 Quest 2<\/a>. Like the recently announced Quest Pro<\/a>, it will prominently feature mixed reality experiences that don\u2019t fully immerse the wearer, thanks to front-facing cameras that pass through video of the real world. Meta has sold nearly 20 million Quest headsets to date, Mark Rabkin, the company\u2019s vice president for VR, told employees during the presentation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n (I\u2019ll have more from this meeting and my thoughts about Meta\u2019s roadmap in Thursday\u2019s issue of my newsletter Command Line.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta\u2019s main challenge with the Quest 3, which is internally codenamed Stinson, will be convincing people to pay \u201ca bit more\u201d money than the cost of the existing Quest 2, according to Rabkin. \u201cWe have to get enthusiasts fired up about it,\u201d he told employees Tuesday. \u201cWe have to prove to people that all this power, all these new features are worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta has sold nearly 20 million Quest headsets to date<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mixed reality will be a huge selling point, and Rabkin said there will be a new \u201csmart guardian\u201d to help wearers navigate the real world while they are wearing the device. \u201cThe main north star for the team was from the moment you put on this headset, the mixed reality has to make it feel better, easier, more natural,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can walk effortlessly through your house knowing you can see perfectly well. You can put anchors and things on your desktop. You can take your coffee. You can stay in there much longer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There will be 41 new apps and games shipping for the Quest 3, including new mixed reality experiences to take advantage of the updated hardware, Rabkin said. In 2024, he said that Meta plans to ship a more \u201caccessible\u201d headset codenamed Ventura. \u201cThe goal for this headset is very simple: pack the biggest punch we can at the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Rabkin didn\u2019t say whether a second generation of the recent Meta Quest Pro, which received poor reviews<\/a> from The Verge <\/em>and others, is coming anytime soon. The closest to what sounds like a successor will be \u201cway out in the future\u201d after Ventura in 2024, when Meta is planning its most advanced headset codenamed La Jolla featuring photorealistic, codec avatars<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe want to make it higher resolution for work use and really nail work, text and things like that,\u201d Rabkin said about La Jolla. \u201cWe want to take a lot of the comfort things from Quest Pro and how it sits on your head and the split architecture and bring that in for comfort.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meanwhile, he acknowledged that the current Quest is struggling to keep new users engaged. \u201cRight now, we\u2019re on our third year of Quest 2,\u201d he told employees. \u201cAnd sadly, the newer cohorts that are coming in, the people who bought it this last Christmas, they\u2019re just not as into it\u201d or engaged as \u201cthe ones who bought it early.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Rabkin pushed employees to make the sharing of VR content on other platforms \u201ctrivial,\u201d redesign the Quest store to make it more \u201cdynamic,\u201d and give developers the ability to do things like automated promotions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The current Quest is struggling to keep new users engaged<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe need to be better at growth and retention and resurrection,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to be better at social and actually make those things more reliable, more intuitive so people can count on it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Even with these struggles, Meta has built an early lead in virtual reality hardware. But its big swings over the coming years speak to the serious competition that\u2019s about to arrive. Apple is expected to announce a high-end virtual reality headset<\/a> sometime this year, while Sony just released the well-received PSVR 2 for console gamers<\/a>. Meanwhile, Apple, Google, Snap, and others are all racing toward something even bigger: augmented reality glasses \u2014 and that\u2019s where Meta is hoping its early efforts in the mixed reality space will really pay off.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Aside from the Quest lineup, Meta also has thousands of employees building future AR glasses and wrist devices for controlling them. The key difference from VR is that the company intends for AR glasses to eventually be worn throughout the day as a replacement for smartphones. Zuckerberg has called them the \u201choly grail\u201d device<\/a> that will \u201credefine our relationship with technology\u201d by the end of this decade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nThree new Quest models<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
AR glasses and neural interfaces<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n