Meta Quest 3 review: a major VR advancement in need of more games

The $499.99 Quest 3 is Meta’s best VR headset yet, with more than enough technical and ergonomic upgrades to make it worth considering for those who want a faster, thinner headset than the Quest 2. This company has fixed many things of issues (detailed in a sidebar below), yet the device’s new iteration suffers the same existential problem: The games still aren’t there.

It’s not that there aren’t games to play; the Quest 3 and Quest 2 share a unified game library, and titles will continue to launch on both headsets for the foreseeable future. But the list of must-play games available is small, relatively easy to plow through, and hasn’t grown much in the past few years. Shooters and sword-fighting games can only be played so much. That’s reductive, since there are some worthwhile experiences available, but the point stands: Meta’s feed of new, interesting games is slow compared to the release rhythm set by traditional game consoles.

Having clocked serious time with the best that Meta’s Quest Store has to offer, the week that I spent with the Quest 3 didn’t convince me that it’s a day one (or perhaps even a year one) purchase for most people who own a Quest 2. And for those who don’t yet own a Quest headset, you can’t beat the Quest 2’s $299.99 price point.

The lack of content isn’t exclusive to Meta. Sony’s PSVR 2, Valve’s Index, and most other VR platforms put a lot of weight on one or two games at launch, then struggle to regularly follow them up with titles that make people feel like their big purchases are justified. This is where one of the big improvements made to the Quest 3, its colorized passthrough mode, could be an advantage — or so Meta hopes.

Passthrough mode was devised to detect virtual safeguards so you wouldn’t run into furniture with the headset on. Now, the Quest 3’s external cameras and sensors are the driving force of Meta’s ambitions to deliver more mixed-reality games to complement its VR offering. MR is a different experience from VR. Instead of immersing you into another world, MR allows you to see the room you are in through your cameras and then adds some games.

Demeo Battles’ MR mode puts an interactive tabletop game right in front of you. I examined the whole board and the fighting detail by zooming into the lower level. One more game. Lego BricktalesThe game, which is due out in stores this December but I have not played, asks players to construct various items to help them navigate 3D environments. While Meta’s camera tracking tech has come a long way, none of what I’ve seen so far resembles a killer app, nor are they what I want to be doing with a headset on my face.

Meta’s pursuit of new MR experiences with the Quest 3 can be read in a number of ways. MR has a smaller market share than VR. Meta now owns a significant portion of this segment. Threes Meta says that a more affordable headset will be available in 2024. It has decided that MR is an opportunity for growth, compared to VR, where the returns for developers are low enough that seemingly fewer big investments are made by major game companies — or indies, for that matter — each year. The headset companies are more often than not the ones who fund and launch flagship titles on their own platforms.

Cameron Faulkner/Polygon

It can’t go unmentioned that Apple’s $3,499 Vision Pro headset that’s coming in early 2024 relies heavily on mixed-reality components, and by Meta participating in a similar realm, it boosts the likelihood that developers may port their Vision Pro experiences to the The following are some of the most effective ways to increase your effectiveness., much (much) cheaper Quest 3.

Meta’s hopes for the future are one thing, but you shouldn’t buy products based on a company’s promises. These promises might not come true. That said, if you are considering the Quest 3 just because it’s more futureproof (I don’t blame you there), you may be assured that Meta set an impressive precedent for supporting its hardware with the Quest 2. In the year 2020, Meta has made major improvements to its hardware, including enhancing screen refresh rates, increasing internal CPU and GPU performance, and adding an easy way to pair with PCs to play PC VR titles. The fact that I fell in love with the same gadget multiple times was a pleasant surprise.

Quest 3 on the other has less obvious room for improvement. That’s good, but leaves me unsure of what Meta may choose to upgrade that’s as beneficial to the gaming experience.

Cameron Faulkner/Polygon

Meta should try to convince as many game developers as they can to upgrade their games so that Quest 3 will run more smoothly. The company has touted that some are being updated, but it’s not an across-the-board improvement for all titles just by turning on a Quest 3. Most games I tried didn’t look or run noticeably better on the more powerful headset, with one exception: Red Matter 2,. The Quest 3 Update brings it closer to the PC VR quality games such as Alyx, Half-Life.

Other than that Beat Saber still plays like Beat Saber. Quest-exclusive Resident Evil 4, the VR adaptation of the GameCube hit (not the 2023 revival, sadly) doesn’t benefit in a noticeable way, save for the Quest 3 offers a wider field of vision. Strangely, Bonelab The following are some examples of how to get started:Tetris effect Look and Run worse on Quest 3 than on Quest 2! I’m really hoping that most of these games get enhanced, but that’s ultimately up to the developers to decide whether it’s worth it. UploadVR maintains a complete list of the developers that prepared their Quest 3 games.

One of the best things about the Quest 3’s arrival is that the Quest 2 will continue to be available for purchase, and that the two headsets share DNA at different price points. Not only do they run the same games, as I mentioned above, but their Android OS lets you find some more games that exist outside of what’s sold on the official Meta Quest store. SideQuest, which I’ve linked to in some resources below, is a great way to go about that.

This is a great console update, with a lot of new games. If the software (both its preexisting library and future titles) ever catches up with the excellent hardware, it’ll be the headset that I have no reservations about recommending to VR veterans and newcomers alike. Until then, the trusty Quest 2 is the one I’m backing.

Meta Quest 3 should be out on 10th October. Meta provided a retail device for the review. Vox Media is affiliated with other companies. Vox Media earns commissions from affiliate products, although this doesn’t influence the editorial content. Find out more about affiliate links. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.