March 27th, according to The Information, Meta still plans to introduce the upcoming budget-friendly version of Quest 3 into the Chinese market through collaboration with Tencent.
In March of last year, The Verge obtained a Meta hardware roadmap meeting record, which indicated that the company planned to release another headset after launching Quest 3 in 2024, aiming to provide the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market. Reports from The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and a reliable Chinese analyst with a history of accurate predictions all suggest that this headset will use the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset as Quest 3 but will feature older Quest 2 Fresnel lenses to control the price to a level competitive with Quest 2.
The upcoming headset is tentatively referred to as "Quest 3 Lite" or "Quest 3S," but there is currently no definitive evidence to confirm its final name. Additionally, clues found in the Quest firmware suggest that the headset will also support color mixed reality functionality.
Meta and Tencent's plan to sell Quest headsets in China was first reported by 36Kr in early last year, but at that time, the reported product in the plan was Quest 2.
Last November, The Wall Street Journal reported that the initially planned introduction of Quest 2 was changed to the upcoming budget version, Quest 3. However, in January of this year, reports from VR Gyro suggested that the partnership was temporarily suspended due to unresolved details.
However, yesterday's report by Wayne Ma from The Information stated that Meta and Tencent still plan to launch a low-cost version of Quest 3 in the Chinese market in the fourth quarter of this year. Ma has a good track record of accurately reporting on the future moves of Meta and Apple.
According to reports, the structure of the cooperation is that Tencent will sell Quest headsets in China and provide technical support, while both parties will collaborate on localizing and translating Quest store content. Meta will receive the majority of device revenue, while Tencent will receive the majority of content revenue. This is not Tencent's first such collaboration; the company has previously sold Nintendo Switch in the Chinese market.
If the collaboration indeed materializes, it will pose strong competition for ByteDance's Pico. Pico also plans to release an upgraded version, Pico 4S, later this year. Additionally, it will provide a cheaper alternative for Apple Vision Pro, which is also set to enter the Chinese market later this year and will feature applications and services provided by Tencent.
Source: IT Home
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