Meta has announced changes aiming to make its Quest 2 and Quest Pro VR headsets more enticing. The more affordable Quest 2 is dropping by $70 with the Quest Pro 2 price being slashed by $500. The news comes after Meta had a big loss for its “Reality Labs” division in 2022 and expectations for Apple to show off its first headset in June.
Meta announced the major price changes today – particularly for the Quest Pro – that will take effect on March 5 (via CNBC).
The Meta Quest 2 will be dropping from $489 to $429 and the high-end Quest Pro will be dropping 33% from $1,499 to $999.
Highlighted by CNBC, Meta’s AR/VR division Reality Labs lost a huge $13.7 billion in 2022 and the price drop for its Quest hardware is part of the company’s plan to increase its customer base.
However, as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously shared, the company isn’t looking to make a profit from the Quest hardware, in fact, this price drop may be the company following through on making it a loss leader (or an even bigger one if it was already).
Back in October, after criticizing the expected up to $3,000 price tag of Apple’s to-be-announced headset, Zuckerberg had this to say:
“It’s typically people build hardware and they try to make a profit off of it, where if you’re Apple, you build hardware and you charge as much as you can for it,” Zuckerberg said.
“I do think that having someone come into the space and basically say, We’re going to build the best hardware in the space and we’re going to basically sell it at a break-even point and in some cases [at a loss].”
Meta reiterated the approach saying “Our goal has always been to create hardware that’s affordable for as many people as possible to take advantage of all that VR has to offer.”
The price drops will happen on March 5 for those in the US and Canada with the updated pricing launching around the world on March 15.
In related news, this week we also got a look at Meta’s AR/VR roadmap for the next few years.
Apple Reality Pro headset
Meanwhile, at the beginning of the year, we learned a lot of details from Bloomberg about Apple’s Reality Pro headset that could be announced as soon as this summer.
While the premium headset that may run at much at $3,000 was previously expected to be unveiled this spring, Apple reportedly pushed that to reveal the Reality Pro at WWDC in June.
Like Meta’s Quest Pro, the Apple Reality Pro is expected to be geared toward developers and professional applications.
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