What you need to know
- All Quest 2 games will work on the Quest 3.
- The Quest 3 will have 50+ new titles by the end of 2023, along with 50+ Quest 2 titles with "enhancements" for the new console.
- The Quest 3 has 33% more RAM than the Quest 2.
- Quest 3 owners will get Asgard's Wrath 2 for free.
- Meta says that developers can choose for themselves whether to make games exclusive to Quest 3 or also support Quest 2; there is no requirement.
For Quest 2 owners, the Meta Quest 3 offers better performance for VR games, full-color MR games, and a more comfortable fit. To those first two points, Meta unveiled many of the Quest 3 games you can expect at launch at its Meta Connect event. So the question becomes, does the Quest 3 offer significantly better gaming that makes it worth the $499 price tag?
The Meta Quest 3 has a new Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip with 100% faster performance paired with 8GB of RAM. We've already tested the Quest 3 for ourselves, and were blown away by the graphical upgrades for current-gen titles like Red Matter 2 and Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners Ch. 2.
Your Quest 2 library will transfer to the Quest 3, and Meta has promised that Quest 2 games like Pistol Whip, Golf+, Into the Radius, and the above titles will have enhancements enabled when the Quest 3 launches, while about 50 titles in total will have enhancements by the end of 2023.
On top of that, the Quest 3 will have over 50 "brand new" titles by the end of the year, Meta promises. Of course, we can assume that most of these titles will also be available to Quest 2 owners; you can see our list of upcoming Quest 2 & 3 games for more info. Of that number, the Meta PR team highlighted this list of a few Quest 3 games that they recommended we test during the initial launch window:
- Islanders MR
- Kurzgesagt
- FitXR: Zumba Studio
- Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord
- Les Mills Bodycombat
- Dungeons of Eternity
- Samba de Amigo
Of these, we had the chance to play Ghostbusters, Samba de Amigo, and Les Mills Bodycombat at Connect 2023. Ghostbusters has a cute mixed-reality mode in which your living room is destroyed by the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, while Les Mills Bodycombat will allow you to see your living room while you're striking targets.
Plenty of last-gen titles will get mixed-reality upgrades. Meta specifically noted that Supernatural, FitXR, and LMB will add MR modes, allowing you to see your living room while striking and moving so you don't need to worry about punching a wall by mistake. This will making exercising with the Quest 3 easier than the Quest 2 if you don't have a large, dedicated playspace.
Assassin's Creed Nexus VR arrives on November 16; Android Central's Nick Sutrich played a demo of the game and was blown away by what he saw. That, too, will launch on both Quest 3 and Quest 2, but it has some significant loading times even on the Quest 3 with its enhanced GPU power; we assume the Quest 2 version will make plenty of downgrades to work on the older hardware.
When asked about Quest 3 exclusives, a Meta representative gave this statement:
"Upcoming launches are coming to both Quest 2 and Quest 3, and we expect that to be the norm for quite a while. Some of our highest-end apps in the future may need to leverage the extra power of Quest 3 and be exclusive to that device, but more software will ship for both devices. That said, while we expect developers to support both devices, it is ultimately their choice. And we do predict that MR titles will tend to focus on Quest 3 because of its advanced MR features."
To summarize, Quest 2 owners will keep enjoying last-gen versions of Quest 3 titles for the foreseeable future, but mixed-reality titles may become Quest 3 exclusives much sooner. Even though the Quest 2 technically supports mixed-reality gaming, the low-resolution, black-and-white passthrough makes it an underwhelming experience.
So games like LEGO Brick Tales (December 7) do work on the Quest 2, but you may not want to play it without the Quest 3's mixed-reality upgrades.
If you do buy the Quest 3, Meta has promised that new buyers will get a free copy of Asgard's Wrath 2, possibly our most anticipated title of the year. You play as Loki in a 60-plus-hour open-world RPG that takes place across Asgard, Egypt, and other realms, in a game that mixes hack-and-slash combat with puzzles and magic. It launches on December 15.
That same month, Meta says, the Quest 3's Xbox Game Pass app will launch, enabling cloud gaming of your favorite Microsoft titles for Ultimate subscribers.
If you buy the 512GB Quest 3, you'll get six free months of Meta Quest Plus, meaning you'll get two new games to play every month so long as you stay subscribed.
The Meta Quest 3 launches October 10 and is available for pre-order now. That's assuming that these new game upgrades — and the upgraded Quest 3 comfort — have tempted you to buy one.
The Meta Quest 3 VR headset offers a significant graphical upgrade, a much lighter design, full-color mixed reality, pancake lenses, and enhanced Quest 2 games to tempt you to upgrade.
