Watch out, Apple Vision Pro. An ‘Xbox-inspired’ Meta Quest VR headset is in the works.
Finally, Xbox is getting into the VR game! Kind of.
Nestled into a larger blog post featuring multiple big announcements, Meta revealed on Monday that it is working with Microsoft on an Xbox-branded VR headset. To be more specific, it’s a “limited-edition Meta Quest, inspired by Xbox.”
Ah, ok. So it’s not actually a full-fledged Xbox VR headset. Instead, it seems like it’ll just be a branded version of an existing Quest headset, ideally the Quest 3 since it’s the newest one. It’s not clear if it would have any unique hardware or software features, but I wouldn’t count on it, personally.
That said, the partnership still makes sense. As pointed out in the blog post, Xbox Cloud Gaming is available on Meta Quest, so you can play Xbox games on a Quest right now. In an Instagram post, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed the new headset would come with Xbox controllers and access to Xbox Game Pass, both of which are prerequisites for using Xbox game streaming.
This news more or less leaves PlayStation as still the only one of the “big three” gaming hardware manufacturers to embrace VR. Nintendo is likely never going to do it (again), but Microsoft said in 2016 it had plans for an Xbox headset, only to back down on those plans two years later.
Bummer for the people who insisted VR was the future of gaming ten years ago, I guess.