Meta CTO: We didn't rush Quest 3 VR headset because we were worried about Apple Vision Pro
- Meta CTO addressed speculation the company rushed to announce its Quest 3 headset because of Apple.
- Andrew Bosworth said Meta timed its announcement for June based on consumer shopping habits.
Meta's chief technology officer says the company didn't rush out its latest VR headset announcement to get ahead of Apple — but he also knows you won't believe him.
In an ask-me-anything session on Instagram on Monday, Andrew Bosworth responded to a user's question asking, "What as the reason for the Quest 3's reveal before Connect 2023? Leaks? Apple Vision Pro? Or both?"
"Both wrong," he said. "People won't believe me — I don't care. I'm telling the truth. You can believe me or not. That's up to you."
Meta announced its Quest 3 VR headset, which will start at $499, at the start of June, with the reveal posted on CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook and Instagram pages.
The news came just four days before Apple announced its first "mixed reality" headset, the Vision Pro with a whopping $3,499 price tag, at its annual WWDC event. Meta's Connect 2023, which will focus on the company's augmented and virtual reality products, as well as its metaverse progress, is slated for late September.
Bosworth, who goes by "Boz," said Meta decided to announce the latest headset in its Quest lineup on June 1 because customers are making holiday shopping decisions about headsets as early as the summer.
"What we found out, especially last year, was that when we announce a new headset in September, October — especially when you already have headsets out in market — a lot of people have already made buying decisions in the summertime or they've kind of committed to a path and so you're not capturing the full holiday season," he said.
"And so we sent a note to Mark long before we even knew about WWDC timing or substance: 'Hey for Quest 3, we want to announce it early so that people know it's coming so that they can plan well in advance of the holiday season what they want to do.'"
Boz spoke about another Apple product, the Apple Watch Ultra, elsewhere in his AMA session as well.
"I have giant wrists, so I was excited when large sizes came out, and it's all fun and good," he said during the Q&A. "However, I can't stand when I do a workout, it constantly shuts off in the middle of the workout."
Also in his Instagram AMA, Bosworth responded to a question asking if the term "metaverse" does more harm than good, comparing the ambiguity around the word to the early confusion around the internet in the 1990s.
"The internet actually is still, to this day, kind of hard to define," he said, adding, "Except that we all know what it is because we use it."