Mark Zuckerberg says Meta’s next VR headset will launch in October: All you need to know

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that the tech giant’s upcoming virtual reality (VR) headset will arrive this year in October. According to Zuckerberg‘s statements on Joe Rogan’s podcast, the headset would probably launch around the company’s annual Connect event, reports The Verge. “For the next device that’s coming out in October, there are a few big features,” Zuckerberg was quoted as saying.

He proceeded to describe new social options that would be enabled by eye and facial tracking, the report said. “The ability to now have kind of eye contact in virtual reality,” Zuckerberg said as part of the feature list. “Have your face be tracked so that way your avatar — it is not just this still thing, but if you smile or if you frown or if you pout, or whatever your expression is, have that translate in real-time to your avatar,” he added.

The headset, most likely codenamed “Project Cambria”, is supposed to be “significantly” more expensive than the existing Quest, which recently got a price hike to $399. As per the report, the tech giant had previously stated that the device will be released sometime this year.

Meanwhile, noted Apple analyst Ming Chi Kuo recently said that Apple is expected to launch its augmented reality and virtual reality, often called mixed reality together, based headset sometime in 2023. In a series of tweets today, Kuo said that the company’s AR/VR headset will enter testing phase sometime in third quarter of 2022 and the device will be launched in January 2023. He also said that the device will be up for sale sometime before WWDC 2023.

Talking about the delay, the analyst says that delay in the shipment of the company’s AR/VR headset is expected to the Covid-restrictions in China’s Shanghai, which he says interrupted the development process. Another reason why Apple might have delayed the launch is due to the ongoing global chip shortage that has several affected the availability of smartphones and other devices in the market.