Whether or not Meta is right that the next frontier in computing (and connectivity) lies somewhere in face-worn augmented or mixed reality experiences, the Vision Pro is ample proof that Apple shares that view.
To Meta's credit, the mixed reality headsets we have today can be traced back five years to the original Oculus Quest, released in 2019. Quest was Meta's (then Facebook's) first standalone (i.e. wireless) VR headset. Not needing a wired connection to a powerful gaming PC was a huge benefit – it made VR more affordable.
But the real selling point of the Quest, and most of the headsets that followed, was that they put games first and “the future of computing” second. Quest brought spatial, room-scale video gaming to the masses for the first time. Games, not spreadsheets, turned out to be the primary form of content that kept people glued to their faces in the long term — as long as there were compelling VR games to play.
Project Santa Cruz
The Quest has been long heralded and is the culmination of years of research and development.
Meta
By the time the $399 Oculus Quest was officially unveiled at Meta's Connect 5 conference, Mark Zuckerberg had already teased the idea of the headset and standalone virtual reality device multiple times, codenamed “Project Santa Cruz.” As Zuckerberg said at the time, the company's idea was to create the ideal VR platform to achieve Meta's goal of putting a billion people in VR. What were the obstacles then? Meta's PC-centric Oculus Rift and mobile-only Oculus Go headsets, both of which required additional hardware like a gaming PC or smartphone. They also compromised on both ease of setup and performance.
The Quest was designed to have the best of both worlds: it was completely wireless, worked well enough to play “Rift-quality” games, and could track your hands and controllers thanks to inside-out tracking. The Quest's main innovation was inside-out tracking, which uses four wide-angle cameras to determine the position of your head, headset, controllers, and hands in space, rather than relying on base stations and other trackers in the room around you. Other PC VR headsets, such as the Samsung Odyssey and HP Reverb, used the same technique, but Quest did away with it entirely because it required a PC connection. While inside-out tracking was not as powerful as a separate tracker, it was good enough and made the Quest completely portable. Today, inside-out tracking is a must-have feature for a headset, and is found in nearly every standalone VR or mixed reality headset.
Quest's main innovation was inside-out tracking…
With a 1,440 x 1,600 OLED screen per eye, an improved version of the Touch controllers the Rift already used, 4GB of RAM, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip that wouldn't look out of place in a 2017 Android phone, the Quest had everything you needed to play a ton of great console- and PC-quality games.
The original Quest didn't have the same visual fidelity as PC VR headsets, but most first-timers didn't notice the difference. It was also heavier than the Oculus Rift, which feels counterintuitive for a device that prioritizes portability, but not unreasonable given that the Rift can offload processing power to a connected computer. Despite the first-generation shortcomings, the headset was a good enough foundation for Meta to iterate and evolve into the Quest 2, Quest Pro, and eventually the Quest 3. As connectivity improved, the Quest series has largely supplanted the company's wired PC options.
A growing library of VR games
Playing games has always been the main draw of the Quest headset.
Amy Osborne/AFP/Getty Images
The Quest includes over 50 games, many of which were previously playable on the technically much more powerful Rift. These include: Moss, Superhot VR, Beat SaberAnd there were games that people were sure to love. Meta's mission was to create a self-sustaining VR ecosystem, similar to Apple's App Store. There were enough players. and Developers were confident that there would always be more games available to play, and that there was ample economic incentive to develop them, and they needed an aggressive strategy to help make that happen.
You could call it a smaller version of Microsoft's Xbox approach. Meta was founded in November 2019 by Beat Games.Beat Saber), and Sanzaru Games (Asgard's Wrath and its sequels) and Lady at Dawn (Lone Echo) and BigBoxVR (Population: 1) in 2021. All of this without any worries about centralizing power in one place. The first time Meta faced serious scrutiny when acquiring a studio was when it bought Within, creator of the Supernatural VR fitness app, in 2022. The FTC filed a complaint to block the acquisition that same year, but after an investigation, Meta was able to absorb the company in 2023.
Meta hasn't always been the best steward of its first-party games. Echo VRFor example, while the popular multiplayer VR game was widely criticized, there's no denying that the money the company spent to make the game playable on its headset directly contributed to the success and continued growth of the Quest platform.
Games make everything easier
Meta may not be as aggressive in pushing its vision of a “metaverse” as it once was, and VR has receded into the background as the company's focus shifts to mixed reality, augmented reality, and AI, but either way, the original Quest was groundbreaking. Apple has probably been thinking about the next phase of augmented reality and computing for just as long (if not longer) than Meta, but it's hard to look at the Quest without seeing a direct connection to Vision Pro. Meta's first standalone headset laid the foundation for everything that followed.
The Quest's capabilities as a fun gaming machine have been key to its staying power. Meta is gradually dropping support for the original Quest for games, but titles that launched for the original headset are still playable on the Quest 2 and Quest 3. The Quest Pro was a misguided attempt to pivot the Quest platform heavily to productivity, but Meta seems to have realized and corrected course with the Quest 3. Partnering with Microsoft to bring Xbox game streaming to Quest makes gameplay even more compelling, whether in 2D or VR.
Gaming is what keeps people coming back to headsets…
Other headset makers would be wise to follow Meta's lead. Would the $3,500 Apple Vision Pro be more popular if it were focused on gaming? Probably not. Beat Saber It couldn't have hurt: games are what bring people back to the headsets, and even if mixed reality headsets lead to bigger ambitions, it's always a safer bet to sell products that entertain people first, like the Oculus Quest.
