Meta introduced in early 2024 it was planning to launch Horizon OS past Quest in an obvious bid to develop into the ‘open’ various to Apple’s staunchly monolithic Imaginative and prescient OS. Whereas this yr’s large Join reveals are behind us—with no bulletins for brand new XR headsets to talk of—the corporate confirmed with Street to VR that accomplice units are nonetheless coming.
Meta introduced in April 2024 it was planning to open its working system to third-parties, initially tapping three foremost corporations to supply standalone blended actuality headsets working Horizon OS: ASUS, Lenovo, and Microsoft’s Xbox.
Admittedly, the Xbox headsets doesn’t precisely rely. From the get-go, it was anticipated to be a branding deal solely, ensuing within the June 2025 launch of Quest 3S Xbox Version—primarily a black variant of Quest 3S with matching Elite Strap, Contact Plus controllers, and Xbox gamepad. Notably, Xbox Cloud Gaming is out there on every little thing from Quest 2 and up, bringing nothing substantively new to the desk.
Each Asus and Lenovo units are anticipated to be materially completely different from Quest 3 although, with Asus seeking to leverage its Republic of Players model for a “efficiency headset” and Lenovo growing “blended actuality units for productiveness, studying, and leisure,” Meta stated on the time.
Now, greater than a yr and a half since their announcement, these units have but to materialize. And neither has the expanded record of accomplice ODMs teased by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
At Join, a Meta spokesperson instructed us that, regardless of the dearth of on-stage replace, the corporate remains to be actively working with companions to deliver Horizon OS to extra units.
Why The Lengthy(er) Wait?
Though the 2025 Vacation Season presents one other large second for Meta to not solely onboard extra customers with its $300 Quest 3S for a second yr now, the corporate appears to be utilizing its launch of accomplice headsets to primarily bridge the hole between system generations. And that hole might be rising.
In June 2024, The Info reported Quest 4 was slated to reach someday in 2026, with a extra highly effective ‘Professional’ model headset set to reach in 2027. Up to date reviews from XR analyst Brad Lynch and knowledge miner ‘Luna’ (by way of Tom’s Information) from earlier this summer time nonetheless counsel that Quest 4 might have been delayed to 2027.
On the face of issues, the wait doesn’t appear uncharacteristically lengthy; Quest 2 was launched in 2020, Quest 3 was launched in 2023, and Quest 3S in 2024, leaving a three-year hole till the next-gen Quest.
Nonetheless, Quest 3S isn’t a brand new system era per se, because it packs in the identical chipset as Quest 3, permitting it to play the entire identical digital and blended actuality video games, however makes it cheaper by coopting Quest 2’s Fresnel lenses and single 1,832 × 1,920 per-eye decision LCD panel.
If these further reviews are true, by the point a Quest 4 arrives the present platform era can be 4 years outdated—not lengthy for a console lifecycle, however nonetheless the longest in standalone platform’s historical past.
And maintaining customers engaged with new headsets that essentially don’t rock the boat in how builders create video games for the platform may be how Meta bridges that hole within the close to time period. Regardless of the case, Asus and Lenovo possible don’t wish to compete with the next-gen Quest, making it an excellent guess we’ll see them sooner relatively than later.
