- Leaks tease that the Meta Quest 4 and Professional 2 are in growth
- Meta Quest Professional 2 has reportedly been canceled twice beforehand
- No launch date or specs particulars proper now
The third time would possibly actually be the attraction, people. Regardless of experiences that two separate Meta Quest Professional 2 prototypes have been canceled mid-development, Meta is reportedly having one other crack at its high-end providing, in response to insider sources – and fewer surprisingly, it’s apparently engaged on a Meta Quest 4, too.
This comes from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who, in his newest e-newsletter, cited insider sources aware of Meta’s XR plans, with these insiders revealing that these two Quest headsets have been within the works – alongside just a few Meta good glasses we’ve reported on beforehand corresponding to one with a show that might land later this yr.
Whereas leaks needs to be taken with a pinch of salt (unofficial data can all the time change, particularly with Meta, who we’ve seen cancel in-development tasks beforehand), the Meta Quest 4 being within the works shouldn’t be a lot of a shocker. Whereas the Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3S aren’t fairly matching the standout success of the wildly well-liked Meta Quest 2, they’re nonetheless doing nicely for themselves – per the Meta Quest telephone app’s Christmas day success and the Quest 3’s rising reputation within the Steam {Hardware} Survey (it’s as much as 20.14% of all headsets used, behind solely the Quest 2 at 34.21%).
What’s extra fascinating, is {that a} Meta Quest Professional 2 may very well be on the way in which. Gurman doesn’t go into specifics however says that Meta is engaged on “a brand new high-end mannequin that might ultimately develop into a successor to the Quest Professional mixed-reality headset.” Not a lot else is understood, however Gurman may very well be referring to a beforehand teased Meta prototype that was probably set to exchange the 2 canceled Quest Professional 2 prototypes we’d heard about: Puffin.
For context, again in July 2023, we reported that the Meta Quest Professional 2 had been canceled – or, extra particularly, that the prototype many believed would turn into being the Quest Professional 2 (to make use of Meta’s semantic language) had been shelved. Issues went quiet till 2024 when, in February, there was buzz that Meta and LG might accomplice on a high-end headset with OLED shows to rival the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional. Nevertheless, our preliminary pleasure turned to disappointment pretty swiftly.
In Might, there was discuss that the LG partnership was off, adopted by experiences in August that the OLED Quest professional 2 Venture – codenamed La Jolla – had kicked the bucket. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth once more clarified that technically, the Quest Professional 2 wasn’t canceled, only a prototype, but it surely didn’t dispel the sense that the Quest Professional line was doomed.
That’s till we heard about Puffin, a 3rd prototype XR machine, which Gurman may very well be referring to in his report. Puffin was leaked again in 2024 after we heard concerning the La Jolla cancellation, and it affords us a totally totally different idea for a headset – a light-weight (110g) glasses-looking machine for VR and MR relatively than AR like different specs.
What I like concerning the Puffin leak is it performs into Meta’s promise of what its Professional-line needs to be – a have a look at the way forward for XR.
Whereas I like VR headsets, the clear business development is that glasses are the following stage of evolution for this discipline – even when, at first, they’ll be much less succesful to account for weight and dimension restrictions. Puffin, with a design that isn’t making an attempt to be like common glasses – and so might get away with design choices like placing a battery puck in your pocket just like the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional or having a bulkier body – might deal with perform over trend, and in-keeping with the Quest Professional’s promise present us the place accessible XR tech may very well be in just a few years by giving us a glimpse by way of a prosumer product that gained’t be the most cost effective.
We’ll clearly have to attend and see what Meta has up its sleeve, because it may very well be that Puffin and the Quest Professional 2 are distinct devices, however I severely hope they aren’t. Whereas I preferred the unique Quest Professional at launch, it didn’t get the software program help it craved and ended up being too mundane of an improve – leading to it being outclassed too shortly.
Puffin appears like a much more partaking proposition with a singular design that might give the Quest Professional 2 the endurance it desperately wants.