Meta has announced the launch of Meta Quest 3 this October, which it describes as the “world’s first” mass- market mixed reality headset.

News of the headset follows Meta announcing $7.7 billion losses in the half year period of 2023 at its VR arm Reality Labs and $5.7 billion losses for the same period in 2022.

At the time, Meta said that it expects operating losses for Reality Labs to "increase meaningfully" year-over-year in 2023, blaming this on the company's ongoing product development efforts in AR and VR, as well as investments to "further scale its ecosystem".

Despite its evident financial challenges, the third iteration of Meta’s VR headset will launch on 10 October.

Now available for preorder, the headset will retail at $499.99 for a 128GB memory version and at $649.99 for 512GB.

Meta said the headset features a 30 per cent improvement in visual resolution and 40 per cent louder audio range than Quest 2, adding that it will give offer users “breakthrough mixed reality” experiences such as playing a virtual piano on their coffee table.

Meta, which is best known as the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, entered the VR space in 2014 with the acquisition of VR headset company Oculus.

The first Meta Quest headset subsequently launched in 2019.

Speaking at the Oculus Connect conference in late 2017, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said “we want to get a billion people in virtual reality.”

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