Meta will allow some Facebook and Instagram users to unlink their accounts as part of the platform’s efforts to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) ahead of enforcement starting March 1.
In a blog, Meta’s competition and regulatory director, Tim Lamb, wrote that Instagram and Facebook users in the EU, the European Economic Area, and Switzerland would be notified in the “next few weeks” about “more choices about how they can use” Meta’s services and features, including new opportunities to limit data-sharing across apps and services.
Most significantly, users can choose to either keep their accounts linked or “manage their Instagram and Facebook accounts separately so that their information is no longer used across accounts.” Up to this point, linking user accounts had provided Meta with more data to more effectively target ads to more users. The perk of accessing data on Instagram’s widening younger user base, TechCrunch noted, was arguably the $1 billion selling point explaining why Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012.
Also announced today, users protected by the DMA will soon be able to separate their Facebook Messenger, Marketplace, and Gaming accounts. However, doing so will limit some social features available in some of the standalone apps.
While Messenger users choosing to disconnect the chat service from their Facebook accounts will still “be able to use Messenger’s core service offering such as private messaging and chat, voice and video calling,” Marketplace users making that same choice will have to email sellers and buyers, rather than using Facebook’s messenger service. And unlinked Gaming app users will only be able to play single-player games, severing their access to social gaming otherwise supported by linking the Gaming service to their Facebook social networks.
While Meta may have had choices other than depriving users unlinking accounts of some features, Meta didn’t really have a choice in allowing newly announced options to unlink accounts. The DMA specifically requires that very large platforms designated as “gatekeepers” give users the “specific choice” of opting out of sharing personal data across a platform’s different core services or across any separate services that the gatekeepers manage.
Without gaining “specific” consent, gatekeepers will no longer be allowed to “combine personal data from the relevant core platform service with personal data from any further core platform services” or “cross-use personal data from the relevant core platform service in other services provided separately by the gatekeeper,” the DMA says. The “specific” requirement is designed to block platforms from securing consent at sign-up, then hoovering up as much personal data as possible as new services are added in an endless pursuit of advertising growth.
As defined under the General Data Protection Regulation, the EU requiring “specific” consent stops platforms from gaining user consent for broadly defined data processing by instead establishing “the need for granularity,” so that platforms always seek consent for each “specific” data “processing purpose.”
“This is an important ‘safeguard against the gradual widening or blurring of purposes for which data is processed, after a data subject has agreed to the initial collection of the data,’” the European Data Protection Supervisor explained in public comments describing “commercial surveillance and data security practices that harm consumers” provided at the request of the FTC in 2022.
According to Meta’s help page, once users opt out of sharing data between apps and services, Meta will “stop combining your info across these accounts” within 15 days “after you’ve removed them.” However, all “previously combined info would remain combined.”
Enlarge/ Meta has a verified program for users of Facebook and Instagram.
Getty Images | Chesnot
The trouble began three days before Christmas. When my sister-in-law Amy tried to log in to her Instagram account shortly before midnight, she was notified that an unauthorized user had tried to access her account. Instagram suggested that she change her password. Wanting to protect the security on her account—an important tool for her successful photography business—Amy did so.
She then tried to log in with her new password but first needed to enter a code to confirm her identity. The code had just been sent to the phone number on her account—a phone number once belonging to her ex-husband but now disconnected.
This was going to be a problem.
Fashion photography and new phones
Amy started her business by posting photos of her two daughters on Instagram, which is how brands like Walmart and Stella McCartney Kids found her. Over time, she expanded her following on Instagram and even used the service’s messaging capability to find and hire models for fashion shoots.
In August 2021, someone successfully hacked into her Facebook account, and as part of the recovery process, Meta recommended that Amy attach a new phone number to her account. So she changed her “recovery” phone number from her personal number to her husband’s number. The two of them were happily married, so this seemed like an easy decision. And because Meta owns Instagram as well, the change affected that service, too. Fast forward two years, and Amy was filing for divorce. As part of that process, Amy removed her husband from their phone service plan. He got a new plan and a new number—and the old number was disconnected.
In all of the turmoil, Amy didn’t remember that she had used her now ex-husband’s phone number for her Meta account recovery until—you guessed it—she received that note in the middle of the night, just days before Christmas.
Getting verified is the answer?
After a mostly sleepless night, Amy woke up on December 23 and scoured Instagram’s and Facebook’s various help pages. There was simply no way to get around the need to access the recovery phone number.
Amy tried calling and texting her ex-husband’s number, asking its new owner for help. But the number had not yet been re-assigned and likely wouldn’t be for months. So Amy spent some quality time on the phone waiting to talk to T-Mobile. Could she buy a new phone and get the old number assigned to it? No chance.
The reality is that Instagram offers little customer support for most users. There is no number to call and no real online support. If you find a telephone number online, it is almost certainly a scam.
But there is one way to get some help: pay up. The “Meta Verified” program costs $14.99 per month and includes “account support” as one of its benefits. So on Christmas Day, Amy pulled out her credit card and got herself verified.
It happened super fast, even on the holiday. Within 30 minutes of submitting her information—a process that involves a copy of a driver’s license—Amy got her verified checkmark. She promptly contacted Meta’s support team, and they said someone would soon reach out with an email link to get her back into her account.
“Here, There, and Everywhere” isn’t just a Beatles song. It’s also a phrase that recalls the spread of generative AI into the tech industry during 2023. Whether you think AI is just a fad or the dawn of a new tech revolution, it’s been impossible to deny that AI news has dominated the tech space for the past year.
We’ve seen a large cast of AI-related characters emerge that includes tech CEOs, machine learning researchers, and AI ethicists—as well as charlatans and doomsayers. From public feedback on the subject of AI, we’ve heard that it’s been difficult for non-technical people to know who to believe, what AI products (if any) to use, and whether we should fear for our lives or our jobs.
Meanwhile, in keeping with a much-lamented trend of 2022, machine learning research has not slowed down over the past year. On X, former Biden administration tech advisor Suresh Venkatasubramanianwrote, “How do people manage to keep track of ML papers? This is not a request for support in my current state of bewilderment—I’m genuinely asking what strategies seem to work to read (or “read”) what appear to be 100s of papers per day.”
To wrap up the year with a tidy bow, here’s a look back at the 10 biggest AI news stories of 2023. It was very hard to choose only 10 (in fact, we originally only intended to do seven), but since we’re not ChatGPT generating reams of text without limit, we have to stop somewhere.
Bing Chat “loses its mind”
Aurich Lawson | Getty Images
In February, Microsoft unveiled Bing Chat, a chatbot built into its languishing Bing search engine website. Microsoft created the chatbot using a more raw form of OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model but didn’t tell everyone it was GPT-4 at first. Since Microsoft used a less conditioned version of GPT-4 than the one that would be released in March, the launch was rough. The chatbot assumed a temperamental personality that could easily turn on users and attack them, tell people it was in love with them, seemingly worry about its fate, and lose its cool when confronted with an article we wrote about revealing its system prompt.
Aside from the relatively raw nature of the AI model Microsoft was using, at fault was a system where very long conversations would push the conditioning system prompt outside of its context window (like a form of short-term memory), allowing all hell to break loose through jailbreaks that people documented on Reddit. At one point, Bing Chat called me “the culprit and the enemy” for revealing some of its weaknesses. Some people thought Bing Chat was sentient, despite AI experts’ assurances to the contrary. It was a disaster in the press, but Microsoft didn’t flinch, and it ultimately reigned in some of Bing Chat’s wild proclivities and opened the bot widely to the public. Today, Bing Chat is now known as Microsoft Copilot, and it’s baked into Windows.
US Copyright Office says no to AI copyright authors
Enlarge/ An AI-generated image that won a prize at the Colorado State Fair in 2022, later denied US copyright registration.
Jason M. Allen
In February, the US Copyright Office issued a key ruling on AI-generated art, revoking the copyright previously granted to the AI-assisted comic book “Zarya of the Dawn” in September 2022. The decision, influenced by the revelation that the images were created using the AI-powered Midjourney image generator, stated that only the text and arrangement of images and text by Kashtanova were eligible for copyright protection. It was the first hint that AI-generated imagery without human-authored elements could not be copyrighted in the United States.
This stance was further cemented in August when a US federal judge ruled that art created solely by AI cannot be copyrighted. In September, the US Copyright Office rejected the registration for an AI-generated image that won a Colorado State Fair art contest in 2022. As it stands now, it appears that purely AI-generated art (without substantial human authorship) is in the public domain in the United States. This stance could be further clarified or changed in the future by judicial rulings or legislation.
Enlarge/ An illustration of a robot holding a French flag, figuratively reflecting the rise of AI in France due to Mistral. It’s hard to draw a picture of an LLM, so a robot will have to do.
On Monday, Mistral AI announced a new AI language model called Mixtral 8x7B, a “mixture of experts” (MoE) model with open weights that reportedly truly matches OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 in performance—an achievement that has been claimed by others in the past but is being taken seriously by AI heavyweights such as OpenAI’s Andrej Karpathy and Jim Fan. That means we’re closer to having a ChatGPT-3.5-level AI assistant that can run freely and locally on our devices, given the right implementation.
Mistral, based in Paris and founded by Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix, has seen a rapid rise in the AI space recently. It has been quickly raising venture capital to become a sort of French anti-OpenAI, championing smaller models with eye-catching performance. Most notably, Mistral’s models run locally with open weights that can be downloaded and used with fewer restrictions than closed AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google. (In this context “weights” are the computer files that represent a trained neural network.)
Mixtral 8x7B can process a 32K token context window and works in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and English. It works much like ChatGPT in that it can assist with compositional tasks, analyze data, troubleshoot software, and write programs. Mistral claims that it outperforms Meta’s much larger LLaMA 2 70B (70 billion parameter) large language model and that it matches or exceeds OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 on certain benchmarks, as seen in the chart below.
Enlarge/ A chart of Mixtral 8x7B performance vs. LLaMA 2 70B and GPT-3.5, provided by Mistral.
Mistral
The speed at which open-weights AI models have caught up with OpenAI’s top offering a year ago has taken many by surprise. Pietro Schirano, the founder of EverArt, wrote on X, “Just incredible. I am running Mistral 8x7B instruct at 27 tokens per second, completely locally thanks to @LMStudioAI. A model that scores better than GPT-3.5, locally. Imagine where we will be 1 year from now.”
LexicaArt founder Sharif Shameem tweeted, “The Mixtral MoE model genuinely feels like an inflection point — a true GPT-3.5 level model that can run at 30 tokens/sec on an M1. Imagine all the products now possible when inference is 100% free and your data stays on your device.” To which Andrej Karpathy replied, “Agree. It feels like the capability / reasoning power has made major strides, lagging behind is more the UI/UX of the whole thing, maybe some tool use finetuning, maybe some RAG databases, etc.”
Mixture of experts
So what does mixture of experts mean? As this excellent Hugging Face guide explains, it refers to a machine-learning model architecture where a gate network routes input data to different specialized neural network components, known as “experts,” for processing. The advantage of this is that it enables more efficient and scalable model training and inference, as only a subset of experts are activated for each input, reducing the computational load compared to monolithic models with equivalent parameter counts.
In layperson’s terms, a MoE is like having a team of specialized workers (the “experts”) in a factory, where a smart system (the “gate network”) decides which worker is best suited to handle each specific task. This setup makes the whole process more efficient and faster, as each task is done by an expert in that area, and not every worker needs to be involved in every task, unlike in a traditional factory where every worker might have to do a bit of everything.
OpenAI has been rumored to use a MoE system with GPT-4, accounting for some of its performance. In the case of Mixtral 8x7B, the name implies that the model is a mixture of eight 7 billion-parameter neural networks, but as Karpathy pointed out in a tweet, the name is slightly misleading because, “it is not all 7B params that are being 8x’d, only the FeedForward blocks in the Transformer are 8x’d, everything else stays the same. Hence also why total number of params is not 56B but only 46.7B.”
Mixtral is not the first “open” mixture of experts model, but it is notable for its relatively small size in parameter count and performance. It’s out now, available on Hugging Face and BitTorrent under the Apache 2.0 license. People have been running it locally using an app called LM Studio. Also, Mistral began offering beta access to an API for three levels of Mistral models on Monday.
There are relatively few 2D Android apps available on the Quest Store, which seems odd since the Quest hardware runs a modified version of Android. According to Meta CTO Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, Google simply isn’t interested in bringing the full Play Store of apps to Quest.
“There’s nothing preventing Android developers who have an APK running on Android phones today from bringing that into VR,” Bosworth said in a recent AMA via Instragram. “They just need to ship the APK to us, and maybe they need to do some light modification depending on how the control scheme would work, but not necessarily much after that.”
So much is clear when it comes to publishing the app directly to the Quest Store, which is the case for apps such as Peacock, Pluto TV, WhatsApp, and Instagram. But what about the millions of apps on Google’s official Play Store?
“We don’t have a way of automatically ingesting those [APKs],” Bosworth continues. “We would love for Google to bring their Play Store of apps to VR. We’ve asked them. They don’t want to do it, so it’s kind of up to the developers to do that.”
While Google’s Play Store is chock-full of useful, oftentimes free apps, what Bosworth doesn’t mention in his AMA are some of the complications that would naturally arise from having the Play Store on Quest. Not only could it open up a host of hypothetical issues with how revenue is split, but also how developers might choose to publish their apps.
For non-subscription-based apps, Google takes a 30% revenue cut from developers, while Meta does the same for both the Quest Store and App Lab. But why would Meta want Google sneaking away revenue, or vice versa? It seems doubtful that two such prominent digital storefronts could coexist on a single device.
There’s also the matter of the Samsung-Google-Qualcomm partnership we heard about earlier this year, which is set to bring an Android-powered XR headset to market, suggesting that Google hasn’t given up on headsets despite having completely shelved both its Daydream VR platform and AR glasses Project Iris.
Whatever the case, Quest headsets are fundamentally Android devices, so enterprising users can thankfully sideload APKs fairly easily via the ever-useful SideQuest software. Granted, the onus is on the user to source the APK in the first place, but with no other way to listen to Spotify while browsing the web without needing to tether to a computer, or using a Netflix app that’s actually updated, it’s thankfully feasible.
If you’re interested in giving it a go, check out our guide on How and Why to Sideload Games on Quest, which takes you step-by-step on the process of getting both 2D and VR-native apps on your Quest headset, but also (if it isn’t apparent by now) why you’d want to do it in the first place.
After 14 years of being sanctioned from operating in mainland China, Meta is set to return to the country with the help of a new, lower-priced version of its VR headset, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Meta’s planned return is thanks to a deal—allegedly still in preliminary stages—with China’s Tencent, the world’s largest videogame company and soon-to-be exclusive seller of Meta headsets in China, WSJ reports, citing people familiar with the matter.
The report maintains Tencent will start selling the headset beginning in late 2024, with the two companies reaching a deal after about a year of negotiations.
Quest 3 | Photo by Road to VR
While the report didn’t mention a potential price of the “lower-priced” VR headset, it’s said the China version could use cheaper lenses than the more costly pancake optics in Quest 3. It’s also said the China-approved version could be sold in other markets besides mainland China.
The proposed deal is set to grant Meta a larger share of device sales, while Tencent will have a larger share of content and service revenue, as the headset will feature games and apps published by the Shenzhen, China-based entertainment conglomerate.
As it is today, Meta’s VR hardware is subsidized by content sales, which would make the deal less attractive for Meta on paper. Still, using its VR headset tech to re-enter China, where it might further leverage growth opportunities for other products, may be worth the price.
Meanwhile, it seems Meta is striking in China just as the homegrown competition falters. While ByteDance’s VR division Pico Interactive has gained territory in Europe over the past year with the launch of its Pico 4 standalone, earlier this week it was reported that Pico is set to lay off “hundreds” of employees as it refocuses on hardware development, something that has all but dashed hopes of taking on Meta in its home turf.
The effects of the EU’s regulatory crusade on Big Tech are beginning to make themselves known to consumers. Yesterday, Meta launched ad-free subscription services for Facebook and Instagram within the bloc. Users will be able to pay from €9.99 to use the social media platforms without seeing ads — or continue using them for free and have their data collected.
We are probably not alone in the experience that ads have completely taken over much of what began as a means of actually connecting with friends (and sharing photos of our lunch). Adding to that, with more and more sophisticated targeted advertising and tracking across various apps, ads have become, at times, spookily accurate.
When surveyed, the instinctual reaction of the TNW editorial office was a resounding “no.” However, €9.99 a month to escape a barrage of ads might not seem such a horrible proposition for everyone — although, given Meta’s revenue model, one that the tech giant did not want to have to make.
“We believe in a free, ad-supported internet – and will continue to offer people free access to our personalised products and services regardless of income,” the company said in a statement. However, it said it was introducing the new subscription model to comply with European Union regulations.
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Meta also, perhaps a little resentfully, added that it “respects the spirit and purpose of these evolving European regulations, and are committed to complying with them.”
Purchase via an app store, pay more
The ad-free subscription service will also be available to residents in the EEA and Switzerland, and have a different price depending on where you purchase it. The €9.99 is when buying it on the web, whereas paying for it via iOS or Android will cost €12.99. Meta stated that the higher price was due to the additional charges by Apple and Google through their respective policies.
The subscription service will be available for people 18 years of age and older, whereas the company stated it would “continue to explore how to provide teens with a useful and responsible ad experience given this evolving regulatory landscape.”
Meta said that if users chose to continue to engage with its platforms for free, their experience would stay the same. Advertisers will also be able to continue running personalised advertising campaigns in Europe.
Meta Connect 2023 has wrapped up, bringing with it a deluge of info from one of the XR industry’s biggest players. Here’s a look at the biggest announcements from Connect 2023, but more importantly, what it all means for the future of XR.
Last week marked the 10th annual Connect conference, and the first Connect conference after the Covid pandemic to have an in-person component. The event originally began as Oculus Connect in 2014. Having been around for every Connect conference, it’s amazing when I look around at just how much has changed and how quickly it all flew by. For those of you who have been reading and following along for just as long—I’m glad you’re still on this journey with us!
So here we are after 10 Connects. What were the big announcements and what does it all mean?
Meta Quest 3
Obviously, the single biggest announcement is the reveal and rapid release of Meta’s latest headset, Quest 3. You can check out the full announcement details and specs here and my hands-on preview with the headset here. The short and skinny is that Quest 3 is a big hardware improvement over Quest 2 (but still being held back by its software) and it will launch on October 10th starting at $500.
Quest 3 marks the complete dissolution of Oculus—the VR startup that Facebook bought back in 2014 to jump-start its entrance into XR. It’s the company’s first headset to launch following Facebook’s big rebrand to Meta, leaving behind no trace of the original and very well-regarded Oculus brand.
Apples and Oranges
On stage at Connect, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Quest 3 the “first mainstream mixed reality headset.” By “mainstream” I take it he meant ‘accessible to the mainstream’, given its price point. This was clearly in purposeful contrast to Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro which, to his point, is significantly less accessible given its $3,500 price tag. Though he didn’t mention Apple by name, his comments about accessibility, ‘no battery pack’, and ‘no tether’ were clearly aimed at Vision Pro.
Mixed Marketing
Meta is working hard to market Quest 3’s mixed reality capabilities, but for all the potential the feature has, there is no killer app for the technology. And yes, having the tech out there is critical to creating more opportunity for such a killer app to be created, but Meta is substantially treating its developers and customers as beta testers of this technology. The ‘market it and they will come’ approach that didn’t seem to pan out too well for Quest Pro.
Personally I worry about the newfangled feature being pushed so heavily by Meta that it will distract the body of VR developers who would otherwise better serve an existing customer base that’s largely starving for high-quality VR content.
Regardless of whether or not there’s a killer app for Quest 3’s improved mixed reality capabilities, there’s no doubt that the tech could be a major boon to the headset’s overall UX, which is in substantial need of a radical overhaul. I truly hope the company has mixed reality passthrough turned on as the default mode, so when people put on the headset they don’t feel immediately blind and disconnected from reality—or need to feel around to find their controllers. A gentle transition in and out of fully immersive experiences is a good idea, and one that’s well served with a high quality passthrough view.
Apple, on the other hand, has already established passthrough mixed reality as the default when putting on the headset, and for now even imagines it’s the mode users will spend most of their time in. Apple has baked this in from the ground-up, but Meta still has a long way to go to perfect it in their headsets.
Augments vs. Volumes
Image courtesy Meta
Several Connect announcements also showed us how Meta is already responding to the threat of Apple’s XR headset, despite the vast price difference between the offerings.
For one, Meta announced ‘Augments’, which are applets developers will be able to build that users can place in permanently anchored positions in their home in mixed reality. For instance, you could place a virtual clock on your wall and always see it there, or a virtual chessboard on your coffee table.
This is of course very similar to Apple’s concept of ‘Volumes’, and while Apple certainly didn’t invent the idea of having MR applets that live indefinitely in the space around you (nor Meta), it’s clear that the looming Vision Pro is forcing Meta to tighten its focus on this capability.
Meta says developers will be able to begin building ‘Augments’ on the Quest platform sometime next year, but it isn’t clear if that will happen before or after Apple launches Vision Pro.
Microgrestures
Augments aren’t the only way that Meta showed at Connect that it’s responding to Apple. The company also announced that its working on a system for detecting ‘microgestures’ for hand-tracking input—planned for initial release to developers next year—which look awfully similar to the subtle pinching gestures that are primarily used to control Vision Pro:
Again, neither Apple nor Meta can take credit for inventing this ‘microgesture’ input modality. Just like Apple, Meta has been researching this stuff for years, but there’s no doubt the sudden urgency to get the tech into the hands of developers is related to what Apple is soon bringing to market.
A Leg Up for Developers
Meta’s legless avatars have been the butt of many-a-joke. The company had avoided the issue of showing anyone’s legs because they are very difficult to track with an inside-out headset like Quest, and doing a simple estimation can result in stilted and awkward leg movements.
Image courtesy Meta
But now the company is finally adding leg estimation to its avatar models, and giving developers access to the same tech to incorporate it into their games and apps.
And it looks like the company isn’t just succumbing to the pressure of the legless avatar memes by spitting out the same kind of third-party leg IK solutions that are being used in many existing VR titles. Meta is calling its solution ‘generative legs’, and says the system leans on tracking of the user’s upper body to estimate plausibly realistic leg movements. A demo at Connect shows things looking pretty good:
It remains to be seen how flexible the system is (for instance, how will it look if a player is bowling or skiing, etc?).
Meta says the system can replicate common leg movements like “standing, walking, jumping, and more,” but also notes that there are limitations. Because the legs aren’t actually being tracked (just estimated) the generative legs model won’t be able to replicate one-off movements, like raising your knee toward your chest or twisting your feet at different angles.
Virtually You
The addition of legs coincides with another coming improvement to Meta’s avatar modeling, which the company is calling inside-out body tracking (IOBT).
While Meta’s headsets have always tracked the player’s head and hands using the headset and controllers, the rest of the torso (arms, shoulders, neck) was entirely estimated using mathematical modeling to figure out what position they should be in.
For the first time on Meta’s headsets, IOBT will actually track parts of the player’s upper body, allowing the company’s avatar model to incorporate more of the player’s real movements, rather than making guesses.
Specifically Meta says its new system can use the headset’s cameras to track wrist, elbows, shoulders, and torso positions, leading to more natural and accurate avatar poses. The IOBT capability can work with both controller tracking and controller-free hand-tracking.
Both capabilities will be rolled into Meta’s ‘Movement SDK’. The company says ‘generative legs’ will be coming to Quest 2, 3, and Pro, but the IOBT capability might end up being exclusive to Quest 3 (and maybe Pro) given the different camera placements that seem aimed toward making IOBT possible.
Calm Before the Storm, or Calmer Waters in General?
At Connect, Meta also shared the latest revenue milestone for the Quest store: more than $2 billion has been spent on games an apps. That means Meta has pocketed some $600 million from its store, while the remaining $1.4 billion has gone to developers.
That’s certainly nothing to sneeze at, and while many developers are finding success on the Quest store, the figure amounts to a slowdown in revenue momentum over the last 12 months, one which many developers have told me they’d been feeling.
The reason for the slowdown is likely a combination of Quest 2’s age (now three years old), the rather early announcement of Quest 3, a library of content that’s not quite meeting user’s expectations, and a still struggling retention rate driven by core UX issues.
Quest 3 is poised for a strong holiday season, but with its higher price point and missing killer app for the heavily marketed mixed reality feature, will it do as well as Quest 2’s breakout performance in 2021?
Razer hasn’t exactly been all-in when it comes to making VR accessories, although there have been a few bits of VR kit over the years from the RGB-infused gaming hardware giant. This time around Razer says it’s releasing a Quest-branded model of its noise cancelling Hammerhead HyperSpeed earbuds.
Announced alongside pre-orders for Quest 3, the earbuds for Quest 3 and Quest 2 include a USB-C dongle for a low-latency 2.4GHz wireless connection in addition to Buetooth 5.2 support.
Image courtesy Meta
Initially released in late 2022, the company’s standard noise cancelling Hammerhead HyperSpeed earbuds support a wide range of devices, including PS5, PS4, PC, Mac, smartphones, tablets, and handheld gaming devices with Bluetooth audio capability or USB-C / USB-A port. You can already get them in two flavors, branded either for Xbox or PlayStation.
Razer says the earbuds are slated to release sometime later this year. There’s no pricing yet, although the standard Hammerhead HyperSpeed earbuds cost $150 MSRP. Considering this looks to be more of a brand licensing deal than the “Made for Meta” badging might suggest, you can probably bet on that pricing.
While we haven’t seen a list of supported USB-C headphones for Quest 3, Meta has certified a number of other earbuds, including the very similar wireless Anker Soundcore VR P10 earbuds, and wired USB-C Earbuds for Pixel, Samsung and OnePlus.
Coming alongside the big Quest 3 info dump today at Connect 2023, Meta revealed that Quest Store games and apps have generated over $2 billion in revenue. While the store is still earning for developers, looking at revenue over time shows that things have cooled off over the last year.
Meta’s Head of Developer Relations Melissa Brown announced the figure on stage, further noting that 100+ new and upgraded titles are coming to the Quest Store before the year’s end, more than half of which will be brand new games and apps.
While $2 billion sounds like an impressive number—it certainly is for the XR industry at large—it pales in comparison to what Meta regularly spends on its Reality Labs division.
Quest 2 next to Quest 3 | Image courtesy Meta
Back in July, the company reported a quarterly loss just south of $4 billion in Q2 2023; Reality Labs’ revenue was down by 39% due to lower Quest 2 sales, making for the worst quarterly performance in the past two years.
With today’s announcement, it’s also clear at what rate content sales have cooled off since Quest 2 was launched in 2020. The company announced at Connect 2022 in October last year that it had topped $1.5 billion in Quest Store revenue, accounting for everything since the first Quest’s launch in 2019, meaning it’s only managed to generate $500 million in the past 12 months, putting a clear end to any kind of take-off ramp that might have appeared to be forming.
Moving forward, this will undoubtedly put more weight on Quest 3 to fill in where Quest 2 left off, as stockholders will no doubt expect the $500 headset to meet or beat its forebear’s relatively meteoric success. Quest 3 pack in much of the functionality of the $1,000 Quest Pro headset, including color passthrough sensors for mixed reality, and has a significantly sleeker profile and more powerful chipset than the now $300 Quest 2.
Will that be enough for first-time VR users to jump in? Enough for Quest 2 users to upgrade? Whatever the case, Meta is undoubtedly subsidizing its XR hardware to make software sales more attractive. And if it doesn’t keep pumping out first-party titles like Asgard’s Wrath 2, they’ll need at least keep those multi-million-dollar success stories coming, like Gorilla Tag’s $26 million in revenue high-swinging success story, or the other 40 Quest games that Meta said had posted revenues over $10 million.
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Connect 2023 kicks off today, taking place September 27th and 28th at Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters. There’s been a ton of news already, so make sure to follow along by heading to our main page for all of the latest in Meta’s XR stuff.
Meta announced at its annual developer conference today that Quest 3 is now available for pre-order starting at $500, shipping October 10th. The company also revealed a host of accessories which ought to help knock a few of those pesky paychecks from your bank account.
Here’s the full list of accessories announced today. You can find them all over at Meta’s website, and likely also through online retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, Target and Walmart.
Quest 3 Charging Dock [$130]
Quest 3 Charging Dock | Image courtesy Meta
Product description: Be ready to play and stay organized with an all-in-one wireless charging dock for the Meta Quest 3 headset and controllers. Includes rechargeable lithium-ion batteries for your controllers. The charging dock is also compatible with our other accessories including Elite Strap, Elite Strap with Battery, and Active Straps (sold separately).
Quest 3 Elite Strap [$70]
Quest 3 Elite Strap | Image courtesy Meta
Product description: Play in comfort with this adjustable, ergonomic head strap that easily adjusts to fit most head sizes with the turn of a dial. This lightweight strap takes pressure off your face and evenly distributes the weight for a more comfortable fit.
Quest 3 Elite Strap with Battery [$130]
Quest 3 Elite Battery Strap | Image courtesy Meta
Product description: Play in comfort and get up to 2 hours additional VR game playtimewith this adjustable ergonomic head strap that features a built-in, lithium-ion battery. Easily adjusts to fit most head sizes while distributing the weight for a more comfortable fit. Charge your headset and head strap battery simultaneously with a single charging cable. *Battery life may vary based on headset usage, configurations, and settings.
Quest 3 Carrying Case [$70]
Quest 3 Carrying Case | Image courtesy Meta
Product description: Take your headset and accessories on the go with style and complete protection. Designed for your Meta Quest 3 headset, Touch Plus controllers, charging cable, adapter, headstrap (standard or Elite) and Active Straps. This genuine Meta Quest accessory ensures a perfect fit, durability, and convenience anywhere you take your gear.
Quest 3 Silicone Facial Interface [$40]:
Quest 3 Silicon Facial Interface | Image courtesy Meta
Product description: Wipe away sweat and dirt easily and get right back to your next workout or gaming session. This soft, silicone facial interface provides a cleaner feel and comfortable fit on your face. Get a perfect fit and block out unwanted light from entering your Meta Quest 3.
Quest Active Straps for Touch Plus Controllers [$40]
Quest 3 Touch Plus Active Straps | Image courtesy Meta
Product description: Play with confidence and intensity with these premium, adjustable straps that give extra grip and stability for your Meta Quest Touch Plus Controllers. Designed to comfortably fit most hand sizes, Active Straps provide added stability and effortless grip while you play, navigate and gesture in VR.
Quest 3 Facial Interface & Head Strap [$50]:
Created using images courtesy Meta
Product description: Express yourself in bold color and stay comfortable in Meta Quest 3. The fabric facial interface provides breathable cushioning while blocking out unwanted light. Color-matched, flexible head strap fully adjusts to fit most head sizes for added support. Available in Elemental Blue and Blood Orange.
VR Prescription Lenses for Quest 3 [$50]
Quest 3 Prescription Inserts | Image courtesy Meta
Product description: Experience a seamless viewing experience without the hassle of glasses. Lightweight and easy to install, these lenses are custom made by Zenni for your exact prescription. Designed in collaboration with Meta, these prescription lenses provide a perfect fit and high-quality visual experience in your Meta Quest 3.
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Razer is also making wireless earbuds for Quest 3, named ‘Razer Hammerhead HyperSpeed Earbuds for Meta Quest 3’.
Additionally, the company is still hawking its $80 Quest Link Cable, which has been confirmed to work with Quest 3.
Like Quest 2, Quest 3 can also optionally swap out their standard Touch controllers for Quest Touch Pro Controllers, priced at an eye-watering $300. This includes more accurate inside-out tracking that doesn’t require line of sight, as with all other Touch controllers from generations past.
Connect 2023 kicks off today, taking place September 27th and 28th at Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters. There’s been a ton of news already, so make sure to follow along with Connect for all of the latest XR stuff from Meta.
Roblox has done very well on Quest. When it launched on the standalone VR platform back in July, it managed to break one million downloads in its first five days, essentially making the online game the hottest social VR platform currently available on Quest. Now Roblox has also showered attendees at its annual developer conference this past weekend with free Quest Pros.
Despite being in direct competition with Meta’s Horizon Worlds social VR platform, there doesn’t seem to be any bad blood over the explosive growth of Roblox on Quest.
A message was sent to attendees at RDC23 this past weekend, stating that Meta is footing the bill to provide a heap of free Quest Pros, its $1,000 mixed reality standalone.
“The news is out! We want to give a special thanks to our partner meta. They have offered to provide all RDC23 attendees with Meta Quest Pro headsets to help you create the best Roblox experiences for VR,” the message reads.
Developers didn’t have to wait long, as they collected their free Quest Pros on site at RDC23.
During the RDC 2023 keynote, Baszucki also revealed that Roblox now features “over 50,000 experiences that are ready right now on Meta Quest.”
Roblox is currently available on the Quest platform via App Lab, however the company says it’s set for its “full” release on Quest sometime in September. Baszucki didn’t specify when, although it’s a good bet that the popular social platform will be a launch day title on Quest 3, which could come as early as September 27th during Connect, Meta’s annual developer conference.
The company also announced Roblox is headed to PlayStation in October, however it’s not clear if that will include PSVR or PSVR 2 support as well.
