🚀 The Week in AR & VR: Meta’s Black Friday Deals, Google’s XR Updates, and Apple’s App Struggles 🚀

Hey there, AR/VR Explorers!

Big news this week in AR and VR—discounts, updates, and major moves from top tech players! Let’s get you caught up.

💸 Meta Quest 3’s Early Black Friday Discounts

If you’ve been eyeing the Meta Quest 3, here’s the scoop: Meta just dropped some hefty early-bird Black Friday deals on the Meta Quest 3 VR headset.

They’re knocking up to £150 off the price to make it easier for folks to jump into VR. And there’s more: a budget-friendly Meta Quest 3S is also in the mix, promising the essentials of VR at a lower price.

Retailers like Amazon, Argos, Very, and John Lewis are hopping on the bandwagon with deals, so if you’re looking to save, now might be the time to dive in.

🛒 Google’s Play Store Preps for AR/VR Headsets

Now here’s something interesting for the AR/VR ecosystem: Google’s Play Store is gearing up for AR/VR headsets.

Code hunters recently spotted some new visuals and hidden hints suggesting that Google is preparing to support XR (Extended Reality) devices in its app store. Even though Google hasn’t been pushing its own headset lately, it’s got fingers in a lot of AR/VR pies.

What’s Google up to? Well, they’ve got projects with Samsung on mixed-reality glasses and are even partnering with Magic Leap—meaning, they’re positioning themselves as a major player in the headset space without making the hardware.

🍏 Apple’s Vision Pro Slows Down on App Development

Apple’s fancy Vision Pro headset is having a rough patch on the app front. After a big debut in January, it attracted a bunch of developers… but now the excitement seems to be cooling off.

App releases have slowed way down. Just 10 new apps popped up in September, compared to the hundreds that launched earlier in the year.

Why the slowdown? Cost and competition. Developers say that building for the Vision Pro is expensive. And with Meta’s lower-cost Quest 3S out there, some devs aren’t seeing the ROI on Apple’s pricier platform.

👓 Meta’s Vision of the Future: Orion Glasses

Let’s zoom out a bit—Meta has a bold vision for the future, and it’s called Orion. This isn’t your average pair of smart glasses; it’s more like a full-blown holographic AI assistant for your face.

Meta’s Chief Tech Officer, Andrew Bosworth, thinks devices like the Orion glasses could one day replace your phone, TV, maybe even your laptop. They showed it off at Meta Connect 2024, and people are calling it the future of wearable tech.

Here’s the mind-blowing part: these glasses could let you control things with just your hands, eyes, and even a neural interface wristband. Imagine flicking through your messages or switching on a virtual TV screen—all without a single device beyond the glasses on your face.