Although Quest 3 is Meta’s hot new headset release, an attractive holiday deal looks like it’ll make Quest 2 the company’s best selling headset this year. Looking at the stock available directly from Meta shows that Quest 3 availability is holding strong while the 256GB variant of Quest 2 is largely out of stock.

While it’s possible that Quest 2 (256GB) is simply under heavy demand, other data we’ve gathered points to the 128GB model being the more popular seller so far. This likely means that Meta didn’t have as much stock of the 256GB model to begin with, or perhaps just not enough to keep up.

While Meta says it will support Quest 2 for years to come, it’s unclear how long the company plans to continue manufacturing the device. Given the demand we’ve seen this holiday at the starting price point of $250, perhaps the company will reconsider its timeline.

Meanwhile, Quest 3 appears to be available in abundance. However, data suggests that Quest 2 is significantly outselling the new and more expensive 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."
  • eadVrim

    More Quest 2 means no native games for the Quest 3.
    Or maybe this unavailability is intentional

  • MackRogers

    Your naive misunderstanding of the landscape is grating.

    These are impulse buys, plastic toys, sold at or near Christmas time being purchased by blue collar parents with a common lowbrow phrenology experiencing VR for the first time.

    This is typically referred to as “poisoning the well fallacy”

    The inevitable boredom, nausea, and disillusionment is critically detrimental to VR. As evidenced by the lackluster sales of Quest 3(a relatively far superior product), all those previous Quest 2 buyers are NOT upgrading and are done with it.

    I am routinely astonished by the idiotic comments on this niche narrowly focused VR dedicated website. Good day sir.

    • Anonymous

      No, it is you who are overthinking way too much and tripping yourself.

      What the entire VR landscape lacks is contents and commitment from famed studios, and this is because traditional studios need a large enough market to make the project stay afloat. The more headsets sold, even if one generation old, is adequate reason for them to justify their entry. Indie games are great but are basically hit and miss.

      Software drives hardware, which finally paves way for new hardware generation. It has always been like this for consoles and phones, never vice versa.

      • Asdf

        Games poison the well, studios poison the ecosystem (with their toxic waste). Why are the app stores full of shooters and not rape games? Is it not monkey see monkey do for both?

      • eadVrim

        Enough market is measured by engagement, not by number. Quest 2 is not good for VR in the medium or long term, for me the Quest 3 is the first headset since Rift DK1 that keep me play everyday VR and MR.

        • Tanix Tx3

          Busines, success is measured in amount of sales multiplied with {price minus maker cost}.
          No shareholder cares how much fun u have with it. This might just raise the sales.
          There is no way vr will reach the amount compared to traditional gaming. IMO is the only way to survive making vr game development a low cost side product of normal game development.
          New hardware price goes up already, just look at meta.

  • Well, it was to be expected! Quest 2 is a good device and it is very affordable

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    The Quest 2 256GB being out of stock is not the same as “Quest 2 Stock Appears to be Draining as Holiday Sale Drives Purchases“. Meta has stated they will continue to sell the Quest 2 in parallel, very likely to still cover the sub-USD 300 market that drives yearly sales peaks during the holiday season.

    With the USD 499 Quest 3 256GB now targeting the less price sensitive enthusiast market, and earlier reports even showing the USD 649 Quest 3 with 512GB being more sought after than the 256GB variant, dropping the 256GB Quest 2 would make sense. They’d end with:

    – USD 299 (249 on sale) Quest 2 with 128GB targeting new users, entry level and “giftable HMDs”.
    – USB 499 Quest 3 with 256GB targeting budget restricted enthusiasts and new users interested in trying MR.
    – USD 649 Quest 3 with 512GB targeting less budget restricted enthusiasts already expecting to exceed the base level storage.

    This cleans up the portfolio and creates a simple, storage based distinction. Someone new to VR doesn’t need to understand the difference between XR2 Gen 1 and Gen 2, or whether a Quest 3 256GB is worth the extra money over the Quest 2 offering the same storage. Now they can pick three price tiers with matching storage tiers. So this doesn’t look like Meta miscalculating demand, instead like phasing out of just one (now odd) model, while the Quest 2 128GB is still being produced, and its stock not draining at all until a replacement for the sub-USD 300 base tier becomes available.

    • Frantax

      There is no Quest 3 256GB.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        You are right. And I was actually aware of that, so no idea how I messed that up. Thanks for the correction.

  • Naruto Uzumaki

    Great i bought quest 3 to play quest 2 ports
    The quest 2 is to bad people will try it and quit vr forever we would have been better off if mcdonalds did vr instead of meta,meta does all possible mistakes all the time

    • philingreat

      the Quest 2 is still a fantastic headset, especially for the price. But what Meta should have done is Quest 3 exclusives games so that there is more incentive to purchase a Quest 3

      • Andrey

        Even if I agree with you to some extent (as a Q3 owner who wants new Q3 exclusives), I still think Meta should have done another thing. And that thing is just simple “providing a compelling lineup of games slated for Q3 release/months after”. Those games, surely, should have been availible for Q2 as well, but Q3 must have got enchanced graphics that shows the potential of the device. That’s really all they needed to do – this way they would have hyped VR in general and surely attracted much more people to buy either Q2 or more expensive Q3 with better graphics and future exclusives that won’t be availible on Q2.
        But what do we have in reality? Amost no new games – and I am not talking about AAA-level ones, – no announcements and even announced games (cough cough, GTA SA VR) are on the brink of cancellation (?) or being delayed to 2024. At the same time released games usually work on Q3 worse than on Q2 (like Assassins Creed Nexus on release). It’s really just humiliating, buying a 500$ shiny new toy and get worse experience than you could have with your old headset.
        This whole situation really looks like the second PSVR2 – company released a pretty good device, but for some insane reason just doesn’t want to support it with software and probably expect all the developers in the world to suddenly start creating games for it. And that’s after their claims that they got back to gaming too!
        And now imagine that next Meta Quest Gaming Showcase won’t happen during spring like it should have, but will be delayed till summer again… If something like that will really happen – or if 99% of announced games will be indies – it will be exactly the same as shooting yourself in both legs right before the marathon (all that time until Q4 release left) starts.

        • philingreat

          the majority of gaming console that launched had only exclusive titles. You can’t play PS4 titles on a PS3, and it worked out well for them. I disagree that we don’t have new games, since the Quest 3 launch there are so many new games released, it’s insane. Assassin’s Creed, Arizona Sunshine 2, Lego Bricktales, Vampire: The Masquerade, The 7th Guest, Stide Fates, Genotype, Inverse, Cookierun, Powerwash, Pillow, Cybrix, Dungeons of Eternity, and coming soon is Asgard’s Wrath 2, Stranger Things and Behemoth coming in 2024

  • eadVrim

    I retrun to PC VR games to play on Quest 3, more Quest 2 means no good standalone VR games.

    • Tanix Tx3

      Maybe not with Quest3, but with one of the next SoC, native games might be ‘good enough’ to drop the need for pcvr. At this point customers without deep pockets/new gpu could join vr easier.
      But this would also shift the focus from potential higher quality to mediocre nativ quality. There is no win win.

  • Foreign Devil

    Are they still selling the 64GB variant of Quest 2? Maybe I should sell mine now that I have Quest 3.

    • Tanix Tx3

      They dont, since many years.

  • Jistuce

    Commenters: The Quest 2 is so terrible it will make people run screaming from VR and never look back.

    Me playing on my Quest 1: … Didn’t you say Quest 2 was a major upgrade from a nice system?

    • Tanix Tx3

      This kind of comment needs the context .
      When I left CV1, it was still a nice device, but I never looked back because of cable.
      When I left Quest2, the device was still on par with the mainstream. Anyway, I wouldn’t buy somth with fresnel lenses anymore.
      The point is, none of the older HMD is completly outdated. The new one just get some detail better, not the whole concept. The journey doesnt go from bad to perfection, but still you not going backwards.

      • Jistuce

        I’m just saying that someone’s first VR headset doesn’t necessarily need to be bleeding-edge technology, adn the Quest 2 is still highly serviceable.

        I would have, and did, agree when people were saying this about the Oculus Go. It was far too limiting and gave a false impression of what VR could do.

        • Tanix Tx3

          I can agree with that. Would recommend to test the best available tech first (at a friend, or rent in a vr caffee, or exhibition). Than get whats aceptable, price vs value.
          I am not a friend of ”beginner start with cheapest available’, since this is not always a good choice.

          • Jistuce

            That’s fair. But we’re at a point right now where a lot of folks don’t have one they can borrow, and going all-in right at the start can be uncomfortable for something as big an unknown as VR.

            And you really can’t tell how amazing it is until you’re actually in the headset, which is a huge obstacle to advertising. It isn’t just a fancy version of the Wii(and I mean that in the nicest possible way, I remain fond of the Wii), but there’s no way to just SHOW that to someone.