With the announcement of Quest 3, Meta is dropping the price of Quest 2 starting on June 4th to make way for its new flagship headset.

The story of Quest 2’s price takes yet another turn. Let’s recap.

When the headset launched in 2020, it started with a somewhat unbelievably low price of $300 for the 64GB model, and later the company sweetened that deal even further by offering the headset with 128GB for the same price. That price point was apparently so aggressively low that Meta may even have been losing money on each headset sold, which prompted the company to raise the price of the base model last year to $400. This was purportedly in response to supply chain and inflation struggles.

But now, just about a year later, Meta has announced that it’s (re)reducing the price of Quest 2, apparently to make room for Quest 3 which will launch this Fall starting at $500. It seems likely this move is an effort to start selling off remaining Quest 2 stock, and perhaps to better differentiate Quest 2 from Quest 3.

So, starting June 4th, Quest 2 (128GB) will return to its original $300 price point, with the 256GB model priced at $350.

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Even in the face of Quest 3, that remains a killer deal for the most complete standalone VR headset on the market, one that’s been very hard for other players in the space to contend with. Maybe (just maybe) another reason for this price change is to highlight the contrast between Quest 2 and the rumored $1,500–$3,000 price point of Apple’s first headset.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Till Eulenspiegel

    lol, making something more expensive for a year then dropping the price back down to look like a discount. They also dropped the price of Quest Pro by $500 3 months after launch. I have never seen any company selling products with such price fluctuation.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      They sold the Quest 2 64GB model below production costs, probably hopping to reduce those costs over time, but instead were hit with a global semiconductor shortage that increased costs massively. Their attempt to grow the market quickly with a subsidized product and then make back the money with software sales didn’t work out either, as too few people bothered to buy the Quest 2, of those that did many stopped using it after a short while, and those that continued to use it bought too few apps, on average less than half the number of titles compared to what each PS4 sold, and at lower prices.

      The semiconductor shortage is now mostly over, so combined with advances in technology/production it is very likely that Meta can now build them for closer to what they were counting on when they introduced it as a USD 299 device. Oculus said for a long time they expected the magic number where buying a device turns from an investment requiring some consideration to an impulse buy to be around USD 300, which is why they aimed for that in the first place and were willing to accept some loss from the hardware sale.

      The Quest 3 will be way above that, and the extra speed and MR features will only be enough to entice a smaller number of enthusiasts, so now reducing the Quest 2 below the impulse buy barrier again to catch those that get interested in VR with the release of the Quest 3 and the surrounding media hype, but won’t commit due to the price, makes sense. It also provides some investment safety for developers and current users, who have at least some assurance that the Quest 2 will not be abandoned as harshly as the Quest 1, as the vast majority of the install base will be Quest 2 for years to come and apps will target that performance level. With the Quest 3 offering a similar resolution it should function more like a PS4 Pro compared to the PS4 with extra comfort and features instead of as direct successor like the Quest 2 completely replacing the Quest 1, giving developers a larger target base.

      So while there is a lot of price fluctuation, it isn’t random and there are a number of internal and external factors that at least partly drive/drove it.

      • Till Eulenspiegel

        You failed to address the $500 off the Quest Pro after 3 months.

        The success of Facebook was due to it being free. Back then people were wondering how Facebook, Google, Youtube, Twitter, etc were able to survive without charging money. It’s like selling drugs, you gave it out for free, got them addicted then start charging them. Or advertisers – based on the number of addicts susceptible to their ads. Of course Meta can’t afford to give out the headsets for free in this case, but should be selling it below cost – like Sony with their Playstation.

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          I ignored the Quest Pro price drop because IMHO this was less about fluctuating prices and more about Meta colossally fucking up, completely misinterpreting what the market wanted or needed, making up a pseudo-use for eye tracking due to the hardware not being fast enough for ETFR and inventing a business use case that even their own employees hated. And then, despite not having any real software to even demonstrate where it may be beneficially, throwing the thing onto the market for a ridiculously high price that was probably necessary to make back some of the production and development costs, but with a claimed value proposition that was less virtual reality and more imaginary numbers.

          Hindsight is always 20/20, but it is mind boggling how badly they miscalculated with the Quest Pro, which is why I don’t really consider it a product with an active price policy resembling sanity, and more as a (decent) research/developer HMD project that was forced to become a product for reasons. And the price drop not based on real cost calculation, but mostly a way to save face and prevent it from becoming a total PR disaster by selling at least a couple of Quest Pro to enthusiasts before quietly letting it die.

          The basis for that miscalculation is indeed that Meta seemingly didn’t get how important an affordable price is for the audience they nursed on free services payed for by ads, and then for reasons I will never understand assumed it could simply transition from there to a high price, high margin professional market based on purely theoretical benefits. Let’s hope they learned their lesson and in the future stick to the drugs they at least know how to sell.

  • CrusaderCaracal

    Nice

  • This is good to increase sales of VR headsets

  • CrusaderCaracal

    Now might be the time to get a quest 2 for me