Ever since Facebook Oculus released the Oculus Quest, the VR headset has been immensely popular, and hard to find. Now it seems that the company is planning on releasing an updated version of the headset.
According to a report from Bloomberg, this new headset will be smaller, lighter, which should hopefully translate to being more comfortable. It will also include a faster refresh relate and redesigned controllers. This makes me believe that this could be the same leaked headset from Facebook Oculus, the Del Mar.
There isn’t any ETA on when this new headset will be released to the market, or if it will even include what Bloomberg ha reported on. It would seem that the plan was to release this new headset towards the end of 2020. However, that all changed with COVID-19 causing manufacturing and logistic problems across the board and has pushed the release date until later in 2021.
A new version of the Quest VR headset, let’s call it the Quest S, would be a nice addition to the line-up. Especially if the reports are true about a faster refresh rate. The faster the framerate, the better the experience, and the current Quest is limited to just 72Hz and Facebook is keen on that. This has caused issues for developers who have expressed interest in porting Rift and Rift S titles to the Quest. However, this new Quest VR headset packing a faster refresh will certainly fix that. Better performance would help as well, as we pointed out in our review that the Quest isn’t as powerful as the Rift or Rift S.
This is good news for fans of wireless VR gaming, yet I can tell that owners of the Rift S are likely going to be frustrated yet again. Ever since Facebook Oculus Connect 2019, we’ve yet to hear and improvements, updates, or news on the Rift S. Leaving many to speculate that Facebook is either planning pushing the headset on life support, while they shift focus to portable/mobile VR gaming. I also happen to be in this boat. I love my Rift S, but the silence from Facebook Oculus has been concerned about the life of my VR headset.
We’ll update this story as it develops, chances are Facebook Oculus will likely release a statement now that the news is floating around.
