meta quest pro (25) — Quest 2 (left) & Quest Pro (right) | Photo by Road to VR

Meta Re-lowers Quest 2 Price & Drops Quest Pro to $1,000

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Mar 3, 2023

Meta today announced it’s lowering the price of the 256GB version of Quest 2 as well as its more recent enthusiast-grade standalone, Meta Quest Pro.

Meta initially launched a 64GB and 256GB variants of Quest 2 in late 2020 for $300 and $400 respectively. A 128GB version was introduced in 2021, which replaced the 64GB version. To stave off rising costs, the company announced in July 2022 that it was raising the price of Quest 2 128GB and 256GB variants to $400 and $500 respectively.

Starting March 5th, Meta is now again restructuring its Quest 2 pricing by bringing the 256GB Meta Quest 2 from its current price of $500 to $430. Notably, the 128GB version of Quest 2 is staying at the same $400 price point.

Quest 2 (left), Quest Pro (right) | Photo by Road to VR

Meta Quest Pro is also seeing a price reduction on March 5th, bringing it from its $1,500 launch price to $1,000.

Meta says in a blogpost that pricing changes to Meta Quest 2 (256GB) will also update across Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the UK.

Quest Pro’s price will take effect US and Canada on March 5th, and March 15th in all of the other countries mentioned above.

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The news of the Quest 2 and Quest Pro price change comes days after a report dropped from The Verge citing an internal memo on the company’s future roadmap.

Meta is said to have several headsets slated to release in the coming years, including a Quest 3 priced slightly above the current model, set for release in 2023, and a cheaper headset targeted at consumers in 2024, codenamed ‘Ventura’.

A Quest Pro successor is also planned, but may come “way out in the future” after Ventura is released in 2024, the report maintained. Meanwhile, the company has sold 20 million Quest headsets, however user retention has been a battle.

Provided the report is true, it seems the company is shaking up its pricing tiers to better entice Quest 2-owning enthusiasts into Quest Pro before it drops the more powerful Quest 3 later this year. Making the Quest 2 more accessible now will also make the “slightly more expensive” Quest 3 appear more attractive to users looking to upgrade then, and not now to the Quest Pro.

What are your thoughts on the new pricing strategy? Let us know in the comments below!

another juan

interesting. also, funny how everyone will hate this particular company for either increasing or decreasing their prices. there’s clearly a marketing issue there.
- ViRGiN
  
  Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
  Vr sites are flooded with pcvr elitists, so every Meta success is bringing dead pcvr even further into the ground, and that upsets those individuals.
  - Peter vasseur
    
    Quit hitting the crack pipe dude. For all metas success? You don’t lower your hmd 4 months later by $500 or a third the cost if you’re successful. That’s a indication nobody buying your over price underpowered junk. Except you.
    - ViRGiN
      
      I bought and returned it, as it was not worth the price in euro’s. Is an excellent headset, but for gaming. Clearly you never used one, cause you can’t afford it.
      - Cockney John
        
        You Wanker.
      - ViRGiN
        
        You’re Cocky.
      - Jonathan Winters III
        
        Cockney. ;)
      - Frozenbizkit
        
        You sound like you live in a ivory tower of bull crap. “cause you can’t afford it” You sound like a elitist ahole.
      - Peter vasseur
        
        I wouldn’t want an over prices inferior hmd from meta. For almost the same money. I got a Ps5 that plays 4 k movies and flat games. A psvr2 that is far far far superior to any of the meta hmds in an overall package. And I got. Woojer v3 haptic vest. Which is a far far far more immersive and powerful set up than a failing quest pro. Pancakes lens is the only cutting edge thing they got. At the the end of the day installing $1500.00 window to look at the garbage next door doesn’t make that garbage look better. May as well stick with the $400 window and clean up the garbage you would be better off.
    - shadow9d9
      
      20 million units sold in 2.5 years when the next best sold 5 million in 5 years…all while selling 10x the copies of games sold on pcvr is the very definition of success.
      - Christian Schildwaechter
        
        Not if you lose about USD 75 on every headset sold plus another couple of billions per year. And doing the math for sales differences shows mostly a 4:1 Quest:PCVR ratio. AFAIR the 10:1 was only for Ultrawings 2, which isn’t a particularly good example, as it was the only non-arcade flight sim on Quest, while they had to compete with tons of much more complex and realistic flight simulators on Steam, leading to much weaker sales.
        
        Meta getting the Quest 2 into more hands than any other VR platform (besides Google Cardboard with 50m+) is without doubt a success, but it was only partly earned by hard work, it was mostly “pay-to-win”. The moment they weren’t willing to throw more money at it and instead asked for a lot of money for the Pro version, that success went poof.
  - JakeDunnegan
    
    You are the only one who thinks that PCVR and Quest products compete.
    
    They do not. The original Rift and Rift S were PCVR products, and the Quest 2 works (quite well) on the PC as well, whether on the Rift games or on Steam, where Quest 2 has the largest share of the PCVR market by a large margin.
    
    What none of us on this site understand is why you have such a hard-on against PCVR.
    
    Someday, there will be enough power small enough where wires (or wifi streamed in case of Quest) or a connected console or PC won’t be necessary. But that’s not today. And your constant nattering about the end of the PCVR world does no one any good. If PCVR truly died, the available software library, and the capabilities of VR, would die as well. The 5M units sold on Sony (when it was cheaper and could use existing cameras and wands) would not remotely keep the VR dream alive.
    - ViRGiN
      
      Quest and PCVR do not compete.
      One is thriving, second is dead.
      Hard to compete with dead platform.
      - JakeDunnegan
        
        I just said that. They don’t compete. And Quest sales compliment PCVR.
        
        For instance, until Meta changed their stance on their accounts (being tied to FB, which I found incredibly invasive), I never purchased anything from their store. So, while I play streaming on the Quest 2 from Steam, Valve was making all the money from games from me.
        
        Obviously, given that 43% of the VR games on Steam being played are on the Quest 2, I’m not the only one.
        
        So…sorry Virgin. PCVR is not dead. Quest is doing well. But, (which you don’t seem to realize) it’s not a zero sum game. Quest can do well, AND PCVR can be “not dead.” And by acting like it is dead, you sound fanboy/irrational/advocate, since you don’t even acknowledge reality.
      - ViRGiN
        
        You sound irrational calling PCVR anything but dead. NES communities are doing better for a much older platform.
      - JakeDunnegan
        
        You really are a one trick pony. Just not one with a single coherent argument.
        
        It’s like you’d walk up to a building and be annoyed that it’s there and refuse to agree with anyone that said that, yes, it really IS there.
        
        So, sure, I’m the irrational one.
        
        Also, ALL VR being active is good for VR as a hobby and a medium. Quest, PS, PC, some random kickstarter. Whatever spreads adoption is good.
        
        You are the outlier on this site who has this fetish where PCVR, while doing well, if not exceptionally well, can’t possibly exist.
      - ViRGiN
        
        You are just a toxic positive nancy, especially with your kickstarter addition.
        Yeah, DecaGear, Lynx R1, AntVR, Arpara and bunch of other campaigns certainly _helped_ adoption, it certainly did not make people wait a year or two for their never to arrive product while loosing funds.
        
        I’ve expressed my disgust with state of PC and called out fanboys claiming PCVR is the high end, when in reality basically there is no high end software at all. There is nothing on the horizon either to get anyone excited. Nothing has changed the past few years on PCVR, from player count, to popularity of the games. Nothing. It’s not stagnant. It’s fucking dead. And if you disagree with that, that’s fine.
        
        Quest 2 possibly going to China is the most important news for VR adoption the past few years. This is what matters. Not yet another obsolete wet dream of VR basement dwellers, not “body tracking” attempts or anything like that.
      - MOT
        
        Just block him. Hes either a child or a troll.
      - shadow9d9
        
        Quest games sell 10x the amoint of their pcvr sales. Pcvr game development is all but dead because sales numbers are so atrocious.
        
        43% of a miniscule amount of total players use a quest, but tje nunber is so low overall, that quest standalone games sell 10x more.
        
        Quest was untied from facebook many months ago.
      - JakeDunnegan
        
        Everyone on this site is aware of Meta and Facebook’s history. I’ve been in the VR space (and have PS, Quest2, Rift, etc) sets. I also have more games purchased on Valve, despite not having any type of Valve VR set.
    - Cl
      
      You’re both wrong, they do compete. Some people will buy a quest over say an index because they don’t want wires, it’s cheaper and it can also do standalone. If one takes sales from the other, they compete. Future pcvr headsets will have a standalone feature, but maybe not focused on standalone games, so they will have even more in common. They compete, but it doesn’t make pcvr dead just because quest sells more because quest also does pcvr. It’s also a pcvr headset. What doesn’t compete is standalone games vs pvcr games.
      - Christian Schildwaechter
        
        I agree that they compete, but disagree with the claim that the hardware does, but the software doesn’t. I’d say it is sort of the opposite, at least from the point of view of Meta or Valve.
        
        The hardware is a one time investment and none of the manufacturers make a lot of money from it. It is very doubtful that anybody ever got back their development costs for any HMD, but this is accepted, as the real revenue stream is software sales.
        
        And while there are some titles that are only possible on more powerful platforms like PCVR or PSVR, and a number of simpler titles seem a lot more fitting for a standalone title, the vast majority of them is available on all platforms. Looking at the list of PSVR 2 launch titles, there is a huge overlap with both PCVR and Quest.
        
        And they definitely compete for my money. I regularly have to decide between buying a title on either Steam or the Quest store. Most of the times Steam wins, not for technical reasons regarding the game itself, like higher rendering quality, but thanks to bundles, regular sales and wider HMD compatibility. I am willing to pay a certain percentage more for a title on the Quest store if it is cross buy, and sometimes really have to weigh between the PC’s much higher likeliness of long term support (I have an Oculus Go with 100+ apps and got burned hard there by Meta) vs the convenience of running it standalone anywhere without needing the PC.
        
        I have payed much more for VR software than for hardware, and with pretty much all income in VR generated by software sales, the results of the competition in this area are pretty important for the willingness of companies to release hardware that doesn’t provide a return of investment by itself. The hardware competition of course still matters here too, but mostly because the majority of users will stick to only one platform, so getting them to buy one particular HMD pretty guarantees software sales.
      - shadow9d9
        
        Psvr 2 is so weak that launch games are 60 hz reprojected with blur and ghosting.
      - Christian Schildwaechter
        
        Specs are an easy way to dismiss a platform, as you can just pick one that you don’t like and declare that the whole platform is doomed due to it. But what really counts is the actual user reaction. If image quality, comfort, sound, tracking, latency or image clarity would have been the sole factor, nobody would have used a Quest for PCVR instead of an Index, but the Quest ended up being used by almost 50% of all Steam VR users.
        
        Sure, you can complain about reprojection causing artifacts, or Fresnel lenses with lower edge-to-edge clarity, a small sweet spot, missing audio, being tethered, and it is always trivial to point out different, “better” solutions. But then you get a lot of people saying they haven’t really been able to try a lot of PSVR 2 games because they simply can’t stop playing GT7, so obviously all these small nitpicking issues don’t really count as long as the user experience great.
        
        If the PSVR 2 fails, it will be either because Sony doesn’t support it well enough with software, or because the price turns out to be too high, leading to low sales and lack of interest from AAA studios. It will not fail because of a particular technical detail, as any true game stopper would have shown prominently in the first 100 reviews. Sony planned the hardware to be “good enough” for their target audience for several years, and they pretty much nailed that. The rest is just noise by people not liking the platform or fanboying for another platform for whatever reason, without any real consequences.
      - Cl
        
        The reason I say the software doesn’t compete is because the type of people buying the headsets. If you get psvr obviously you won’t be buying pc or quest games. If you get quest because you like standalone and don’t have a good pc, you will buy from the quest store. If you have a good pc and want to stream or tether to your pc you will buy from steam.
        
        The only time I agree is if there is crossbuy on quest store. That’s the only time I would buy there over steam, so in a way they compete on some level. So if Facebook really wants to compete they will make all games crossbuy with pc versions. If valve then goes onto make their own standalone headset then there will be even more competition
        
        But as I see it there are 3 distinct categories of vr game buyers. Standalone, console and pc. They compete on which hardware you buy, but the software is determined by your usecase. It’s not like a steam vs epic store competition.
      - JakeDunnegan
        
        My point CI, was that it’s not a zero-sum game (which I mention somewhere else in this silly conversation with the virgin). In other words, having PCVR doesn’t take away from Quest or vice versa. They complement each other far more than they compete.
        
        And as Christian mentions below, Meta actually has lost business to Valve due to their store not getting sales when people buy PC versions of them. If Virgin didn’t sound so stupid, I’d think he was a PR person for Meta, with the way he gets so angsty about Quest, and his insistence that his lyin eyes tells him that “PCVR is dead.”
Andrey

It happens the second time and I am still hoping to see “Quest Touch Pro Controllers dropped in price as well” in the article. Even a 50$ discount will work for me and for 100$ discount I would pray for Zuck’s health every evening for a year. But, apparently, Quest Pro controllers are much more popular than Quest Pro itself, so there is no reason for them to drop price, huh? Well, in any case, the only thing that stops me from purchasing it for 300$ right now is this whole uncertainty with Quest 3 (Will it support it (99% it will but still)? Will it be released with self-tracking controllers or not (just like they will release Quest 3 which is better than Pro practically in everything a year later for half of it’s price, what will stop them to do the same with controllers? Especially if the 2023’s Quest 3 will aim at enthusiasts?)? Will there be an option to purchase Quest 3 with Touch Pro controllers without paying for standard controllers?). The day when Quest 3 [pre]-orders will go live I will buy Touch Pro as well, if not sooner – that’s one of the fewer things I am sure about in my life!
- MOT
  
  Talking of controllers. Try the psvr2 sense controllers with the adaptive triggers. They are next level.
  - Andrey
    
    Before release, I always thought that PSVR2 controllers triggers will be pretty cool, not gonna lie. But, again, seamless tracking (especially in some weird positions) for me personally is a much more important thing. The second important thing is maximum portability (no tracking rings of any kind please!) and the third – finger tracking for each finger (even pseudo-tracking like Index’s Knuckles – if it was implemented in mainstream headset like Quest, I bet we could see some cool game mechanics using it like signs from The Witcher series when you activate magic using different fingers position). And only after that I will be concerned about feedback and trigger’s resistance.
    And about trying it – from time to time I am looking on the internet for a place to try it out (and finally complete the Horizon there), but it seems all those local rental places/gaming houses are not going to buy PSVR2 any time soon and will stick with HTC Vive (Index at max), Quest 2 + old PSVR, lol. I am really interested if they will manage to upgrade to Quest 3 during the 2024 or ~500$ price will stop them here as well.
Xongas

PSVR 2 effect!
- Peter vasseur
  
  Yeah you vr needs power more so than wireless. Without power your stuck with ps 1 level graphics!
  - ViRGiN
    
    You mean graphics like at least half the launch titles?
  - MOT
    
    Agreed. Mobile phone VR just isnt powerful enough to be truly immersive.
- Christian Schildwaechter
  
  Not really, or at least not due to the PSVR 2 being technically better. Meta never marketed the Quest Pro as a gaming device, they wanted it to allow them to leave the “gaming only” VR niche and establish it as a productivity tool, including the price that might actually have been acceptable in a professional environment, if there had been sufficient benefits. The Quest Pro controllers are an example of excellent technology that removes any hitches that may hinder its use as an office tool, but are complete overkill just for gaming due to their significant complexity and resulting price.
  
  The Quest Pro still being bought mostly for gaming and thus even being compared to the PSVR 2 is basically an accident, or more precise, a hint that Meta’s attempt to establish the Pro outside of gaming utterly tanked. If enough companies had jumped on the VR conferencing wagon, they wouldn’t have reduced the price, no matter how successful or not successful the PSVR 2 might have been. This would only have mattered for the Quest 3 again positioned as a consumer HMD.
  
  If there is a PSVR 2 impact on Quest Pro price reduction, it is most likely quite the opposite of the PSVR 2 putting any direct pressure on them. We still have to see if the PSVR 2 will be a bigger success than the PSVR 1, as most reviewers praise the technical advances, but point out the price being even higher than for the PS5 itself. And while the price seems comparable to that of the PSVR 1, on launch the PSVR 1 provided the cheapest way into VR on any platform by far , something no longer true today, where we have a lot more alternatives.
  
  And there are reports not really contradicted by Sony, only argued around, that pre-sales numbers were disappointing, which would dampen not only the prospects of the PSVR 2, but also for the growth of the whole VR market, with a following chain reaction of less investment in AAA titles and then less interest by casual users.
  
  VR enthusiasts often look at specs or the actual quality of titles, but the 95% of PC and PS gamers that aren’t using VR so far are often looking more for familiar franchises with known properties. PSVR 2 launched with dozens of well known VR titles, but what everybody is talking about are the games from the Horizon, Gran Turismo and Resident Evil franchise, and these will attract new users. Without a continuous flow of such high level titles, we will see another round of VR as a niche gaming technology, instead of providing a whole generation of future office workers growing up accustomed to wearing headsets and using Horizon Worlds or VRChat, that may be more naturally inclined to also use HMDs in their jobs. Which is how lower sales numbers for the PSVR 2 could indirectly impacts the future prospects of the Quest Pro line.
- shadow9d9
  
  Wire, reprojection, tiny sweet spot, mura, no built in audio.
Octogod

This is the SEGA effect:

1) Launch hardware too early, too pricey, and with no software.

2) Panic months later and reduce the price, while talking about your next hardware available for launch in months.

3) Watch as nobody buys your hardware and realize you have burned your hardcore market who hesitates to buy new hardware again.

4) Pikachu face.
- xyzs
  
  Yeah that looks quite desperate. They thought Meta brand was popular like Apple and that they could get the masses spend $1500 in their products: wrong.
  
  Anyway, if they can waste 400 millions to buy supernatural gym app, buy ready at down to just screw them up, buy some optics rnd companies to screw up competition, then I won’t cry over their struggle :)
  - Peter vasseur
    
    Yeah meta can go the way of the dodo, zuck can suck it!
    - sfmike
      
      The problem is if Meta goes VR probably goes too. Remember 3DTV.
      - xyzs
        
        Yes, that’s why I can’t wait for Apple to release their Reality Pro. No need to have Meta around to keep the VR trendy anymore.
      - [BlurBusters] Mark Rejhon
        
        I’m more excited about the rumored standalone PCVR headset that Valve wants to release ~2024-2025. Think of a complete PC (Steam Deck 2 guts) built into the headset, capable of running .exe and .apk VR apps, with Steam Deck Store built into the headset, but with VR apps. Perhaps using a “DLSS 3 Low Lag Mobile” frame generation system to get PCVR resolutions out of 2024-era M2-league GPUs. Half Life Alyx included, computer optional (for even better graphics). As with Steam Deck 1 original, they will obviously let you dual-install directly on the headset (standalone PCVR) and on your external gaming PC rig (traditional PCVR), as Steam lets you install on multiple PCs.
      - ViRGiN
        
        If such technology existed, steam deck wouldn’t be a glorified 720p 30fps handheld pc on medium settings.
      - Cl
        
        Hardware in steamdeck is better than in quest 2, so you must think quest is trash huh?
      - ViRGiN
        
        No, it’s an excellent mobile vr using the best possible chipset at time of release. Deck is a multi harvester that doesn’t do anything special and is underpowered. Handheld pcs were a thing way before gear vr
      - [BlurBusters] Mark Rejhon
        
        Yep, Deck 1 is underpowered. But Deck 1 is not applicable here. See my big reply about about why it’s realistic to a practical shoo-in sometime this decade.
      - ViRGiN
        
        you’ve made such a long post that it’s not really worth responding to every single point; but as time has shown – both rumours and official statements from valve means absolutetly NOTHING! we had 3 games promised, wireless was a solved issue in 2017. gabe himself also talked about brain-interface and that they have a very real product already made – but – as easy to predict – they can’t demonstrate it publicly because of some laws and potential backlash.
        
        valve is a joke of company, a jesus figure for basement dwellers. entire company is built around file-hosting services like megaupload by KIM DOTCOM, paired with superficial ‘love’ from blindfolded gamers.
        
        valve is an outdated company that has nothing to offer, other than being on the market for 20+ years hence the monopoly.
      - Cl
        
        I think you overestimate how powerful quest2 is. It’s basically a 865 snapdragon.
      - ViRGiN
        
        And what processor was better at the moment of release?
      - Cl
        
        You’re saying a steamdeck can’t do vr because it’s slow, but quest is slower. Besides, he’s talking about a steamdeck 2. When steamdeck came out it was using zen2 and rdna2. Apus with that combo didn’t come out until after steamdeck was released afaik.
      - ViRGiN
        
        I said deck is underpowered 720p 30fps device. I didn’t say anything about vr. If it could run vr, it would play like 1440p at 60fps, but it doesn’t. It has nothing to do with vr.
        
        And so you still haven’t said what processor quest 2 could have used instead. It’s not “underpower”, it’s cutting edge for the time of release. Quest is also nowhere near as noisy or hot like deck. It’s time to stop masturbating about the idea of another valve headset, and a headset that plays vr exes at that
      - Cl
        
        The comment you replied to was talking about steamdeck 2 guts put into a headset and your reply was that steamdeck is slow. It was always about vr.
        
        Quest2 used the best at time time, but so did steamdeck. None of this matters because you say steamdeck is slow, but it’s faster than quest. Which was my whole point. Not if it could have been done better.
      - ViRGiN
        
        And random gaming laptop from 3 years ago is faster than deck… So what’s the point? Deck was always outdated, quest is a brand new tech, nobody have really put so much so well in a single package.
      - Cl
        
        So you must think quest is trash then if a gaming laptop from 3 years ago is faster then huh?
      - ViRGiN
        
        So you must think RTX4090 is trash, because RTX4090TI exists. Are you effing stupid?!
      - Cl
        
        I’m just using your logic. I guess you don’t get it. Oh well.
      - [BlurBusters] Mark Rejhon
        
        I’m not talking about Steam Deck 1. I’m talking about Deck 2 or Deck 3 architecture using Apple M1/M2 class far better than Quest 2. Remember, PCVR-quality graphics already exists in Quest 2 if you play “Red Matter 2” on Quest 2. Have you ever played Red Matter 2 on Quest 2? Then you realize mobile graphics is further along than you think. It looked roughly GTX 1080 league (I have an RTX 3080 now). So mobile graphics is already getting there if you go to the superlatively optimized games.
      - Christian Schildwaechter
        
        Okay, that was a lot (and this is coming from someone who despite contrary intentions regularly posts novel sized comments like this one). I agree with your general enthusiasm for a potential Valve Deckard HMD, I own a Steam Deck and am a huge fan, but I have to curb your enthusiasm in some regards, as you basically assume that a rather long list of best case scenarios all relying on each other will come true, which is very unlikely to happen.
        
        – Red Matter 2 is an example of excellent game design, not of mobile GPU performance. The locations are tight rooms, there are few objects, all lights are pre-rendered. It is more like painting the image of a mansion onto a shack and a few selected pathways and cleverly distracting you from the rest. That is in no way comparable to a much faster PC GPU that allows you to freely stroll through the scenario, rendering and illuminating everything in real time.
        
        – Mobile GPU performance is more than a decade behind desktop, and though the distance shrinks, it will stay large for a very long time. If the Qualcomm XR performance would continue to improve at the speed it did between XR1/SD820 and XR2/SD865, meaning about 32% faster every year, a 2029 Quest 5 would reach the performance of the 2020 PS5, though at this time there would already be a much faster PS6. Apple was cited with 40% performance gains per year, but your estimates about the difference between high end desktop and high end mobile blurring by the 2030s is way off even for them. And if as reports indicate the Quest 3/XR2 Gen 2 is twice as fast as the Quest 2/XR2 Gen , Qualcomms yearly increases have actually fallen to only 26%.
        
        – Do not count on Qualcomm coming out with an M1 like SoC anytime soon. Their last designs haven’t been that great, and they even got beaten by MediaTek, formerly only know for ultracheap lowend SoCs, with the Dimensity 9000 beating SD8 Gen 1. And even Apple don’t deal in magic. The M1 versions that can now (impressively) keep up with mid range PC GPUs are the Pro/Max/Ultra versions that draw a lot more power, though much less than anything Nvidia. A lot of that is pure physics, with higher speeds requiring exponentially more power, making them unsuitable for mobile.
        
        – The astonishing speed of M1 chips when running x86 software is due to Apple extending the ARM ISA with instructions to handle the x86 little endian architecture, saving a lot of expensive byte reordering. No one else has implemented this, making x86 emulation on ARM mostly unusable, and even on Macs it only provides performance similar to previous x86 Macs, native code of the same app beats it by far.
        
        Emulation is useful for cases where the alternative is not being able to run the software at all, which is also the main motivation for its support in Proton: Steam is available as a beta for Chromebooks, which often come with ARM CPUs, so it would be desirable to allow at least some native x86 code to run for parts that cannot be recompiled or aren’t using libraries available in a native form, like WINE/Proton, for a “better than nothing” scenario.
        
        – WINE isn’t really a subsystem of Proton. Proton is a fork of WINE, optimized for gaming with special graphics performance improvements. WINE has been around since 1993, and it wasn’t really the Steam Deck being released that got WINE and other FOSS projects moving, it was Valve actually paying developers. I am a huge fan of FOSS and a decades long Unix/Linux user, but user centric development in FOSS happens at crawling speed at best. A lot of improvements we see today in FOSS actually come from companies providing teams of developers, or in cases like Blender, sponsoring full time developers within the project. Monado is an example of a non-sponsored, slow moving project, and in its current state mostly useful as testbed for OpenXR hardware developer. It’s HMD support is rudimentary at best, and most of the advanced features are just wrappers around closed source libraries like those from Ultraleap.
        
        – Libraries like Proton cover OS differences and can help improve performance with running foreign architecture binaries, though the latter comes with the above mentioned performance issues that pretty much make emulation a no-no for performance hungry areas like VR. For new VR games this is hardly an issue, as most VR titles are developed with Unity or Unreal anyway, which easily allow to build for another platform, thanks to pretty much all of them now being based on OpenXR. The long term goal of OpenXR is to make binaries swappable between different OS on the same platform, but that will only come in a much later version.
        
        – Due to the “easy to create a new build” and “very slow when emulated” situation, I also wouldn’t expect Deckard to even try running any ARM VR APKs. It is assumed that Deckard will feature both an ARM SoC and a faster successor to the AMD Van Gogh APU used in the Steam Deck, possibly using shared rendering, with the ARM SoC providing things like the tracking and graphics overlays, while the x86 APU runs the actual games.
        
        The main benefit of integrating an ARM GPU would be lower power requirements for non-gaming tasks like showing menus or watching movies, and it could also serve as a streaming target for a much more powerful PC. But all this requires only a low powered SoC, it wouldn’t make sense to integrate a Quest class SoC also capable of running games by itself due to the extra power requirements. So it is very likely that the Deckard would only run x86 VR software, which makes a lot of sense, because this opens it up to the whole existing Steam VR catalogue, the source of all of Valve’s income, instead of developer having to provide new builds just for Deckard. Running Steam gaming APKs will most likely be limited to the Chromebooks that now also got a Steam client and support for x86 integration in Proton, if those feature (only) an ARM CPU.
        
        – I also believe that we will rely much more on smarter rendering technologies like upscaling and frame extrapolation, and beyond that mapping textures on generic 3D characters with trained networks, which can be faster than actually rendering them, and that mobile VR will thereby reach high resolutions much faster than the pure CPU/GPU performance gains would allow. But I don’t thing that this will finally take VR mainstream, or that anything will really take VR mainstream.
        
        While VR enthusiast treasure the high immersion and being taken to another realm, a lot of things hint that many people really don’t like the whole isolated experience of VR at all, and that the intense immersion isn’t what they are looking for. For these VR will be good for a short term WOW effect, but not enough to continue to use it. There are reasons why extremely non-immersive mobile games are by far the fastest growing gaming sector, now generating more than half of all the revenue, up from just one quarter only five years ago. Consequently I don’t think that there is or ever will be giant VR money, esp. since companies like Meta consider VR mostly as a stepping stone to AR with real mass appeal.
        
        – And lastly: Do not bet any money on any of the things you suggested betting on, that would only end badly.
      - Cless
        
        What? This is dumb. You shouldn’t be excited by any rumors of Valve releasing anything they haven’t announced, EVER.
        Haven’t you guys learned that lesson already?
      - Ookami
        
        Yeah as much fun as it is theorizing and imagining the next Valve HMD (assuming one will even release someday), when it comes to Valve it’s best to just keep your hopes curbed until an official announcement. And not just any announcement, but one with release dates and all,
      - shadow9d9
        
        No pcvr software development, so no point.
      - Peter vasseur
        
        I don’t agree I think psvr2 has a very good chance to change that.
      - Frozenbizkit
        
        yeah you’re wrong on that.
      - Hokhmah
        
        3DTV is not comparable to VR for several reasons. It existed before Oculus/Meta and will so without them, even if it’s just an enthusiast niche like for example sim racing/flying.
        
        3DTV was a fail from the get-go, even watching 3D in cinema wasn’t really good. Inducing eye strain and headaches way more than most VR headsets who also happen to mimic the 3D effect/depth perception way better than 3DTV.
      - tc tazyiksavar
        
        Nope, it will be unfortunate however its place will be filled and other big players will enter to the market. Btw, 3DTV will be back to sometime in the future much stronger without glasses with the help of VR.
- Till Eulenspiegel
  
  Meta aka Facebook is a social network company, they have no experience selling electronic products.
  
  They enforced Facebook login, then removed it and enforced Meta login. Raised the price of Quest 2 by $100 during it’s mid-life. Launched their premium Pro headset at an unfeasible price then reduced it dramatically few months later. Which company does that?
  
  They should have launched all tiers at the same time like iPhone – they should have kept the Quest Pro design for Quest 3 and launch a cheaper bulkier version as Quest 3 Lite.
  - Cl
    
    I agree sort of. They should have release quest pro alongside quest 3 and called it quest3 pro. Why would they make a $1500 headset when new cpu is coming out soon? Later this year they will have a much cheaper quest 3 with better specs and so far no plans on updating quest pro with better specs because they just released it. Should have waited.
JT1000

Meta is dead to me now! I ain’t gonna waste another penny in the meta eco system just for me to fall in love and have my heart broken again.
Rudl Za Vedno

Meta is an utter sh@tshow. First overprice the product no one wants in the first place then lower the price on top of announcement that better and cheaper Quest 3 is coming out this year. Meta’s VR/AR marketing department should be fired.
- ViRGiN
  
  They should follow valve. Make one shitty headset and never drop the price down and never invest anything into the ecosystem.
  - Rudl Za Vedno
    
    Granted, Valve and MS are sh@itshows when it comes to XR, but Meta’s marketing department is on another level. They should all watch and learn how marketing is done right by Sony.
    - ViRGiN
      
      It’s a corporation. They know more than you do.
      Releasing Quest 2 after Quest 1 was also supposed to hurt them, and look where are we now.
      - Peter vasseur
        
        Yeah a failing quest pro headset. With a new quest 3 that’s still underpowered junk.
      - ViRGiN
        
        You can always get a valve index and play gorilla tag on pc like majority of pcvr users do.
      - Peter vasseur
        
        Actually outside of 130 degree fov my psvr2 is way nicer than the index. I’d take a index over a current meta product though, but no need I have the best hmd on the market at the moment for the price point that is.
      - Xongas
        
        or you can do as the majority of QUEST users and play gorilla tag too!
      - ViRGiN
        
        They are all getting bang for their buck, unlike gaming pcs owners.
      - Rudl Za Vedno
        
        Meta lost $13.7 billion on Reality Labs in 2022 alone and it’s value plunged by $700 billion. Extraordinary performance indeed.
      - ViRGiN
        
        You misspelled invested.
      - Jonathan Winters III
        
        2022 was a losing sector for nearly ALL major tech companies, not just Meta.
      - shadow9d9
        
        Research costs money. It is working as intended.
      - sfmike
        
        It’s a corporation, which means they spend most of their time with management and middle management in meetings droning on and on about pricing and never getting much of anything done. They all worry about the stockholders more than they care about making us happy and that’s just not Meta.
      - ViRGiN
        
        You should be happy, since you have such a hard on for meta ‘failures’.
    - NotMikeD
      
      Don’t get me wrong, I certainly DO hope Meta learns from Sony’s playbook on a number of factors, but not sure ‘marketing’ for PSVR2 is one of them.. Announcing everything via blog posts, failing to generate lots of pre-release hype outside of the VR bubble.. I think there’ll be bigger push close to the holidays and this is a ‘soft-launch,’ as many have said, but it’s pretty well discussed at this point that marketing efforts for PSVR2 has been the weak leg of the stool.
- sfmike
  
  Believe me you should want those pancake lens on the Quest Pro. I think they are worth the thousand dollar price tag.
  - Josh
    
    My only hesitation is, isn’t the quest 3 slated to have the same pancake lens design?
  - Lucidfeuer
    
    Suck harder you might get one for free…
    - ViRGiN
      
      beg harder, and index 2 will come out cause you asked for it
MeowMix

Buying a QuestPro bundle on Sunday ! Awesome stuff. This should have been the launch day price
Chris Meeks

Oof. Someone saw GT7 in VR
TonyVT SkarredGhost

Why buying the 128GB model for $400 if you can get the 256GB one for $430??? This pricing strategy is utter nonsense
- ViRGiN
  
  What a way to show you know nothing about consumers behaviors.
  
  Also, now it’s nonsense, and before it was nonsense to charge $100 for 128gb? The logic was you can buy multiple times larger memory cards/hard drives for nearly half as much.
- Andrew Jakobs
  
  I’ll bet the stock for 128GB is very low and even almost out of stock, so no need to firesale it to get the stock cleared.
- Christian Schildwaechter
  
  Before the 2022 price increase Zuckerberg said they sell some of the headsets slightly below and some slightly above production costs. As the only headsets they sold at that time were the Quest 2 128GB and the Quest 2 256GB models, the 128GB had to cost more than USD 299 to build, but the 256GB less than USD 399. And the spot market price for the extra 128GB in the higher end model was about USD 10, putting production costs to around USD 344/354 for the 128GB/256GB model respectively, so now below the newer sales price.
  
  My guess is that just too few people went for the higher end model, esp. after the price increase put it well above the typical USD 400 impulse buy threshold and instead close to the “half a thousand” psychological barrier. By reducing the price they now also distance themselves by more than USD 100 for the highest end Meta consumer HMD compared to the PSVR 2, will now sell significantly more of the larger version and still make a profit, as it costs less than USD 30 to add the extra flash.
  
  This of course looks strange compared to the base model still at USD 400, but they will most likely have to keep that there to prevent a price sticker shock when the Quest 3 releases. And just from the point of manufacturing costs determining a products price it makes a lot of sense, we just got used to companies like Apple or Samsung charging insane prices for higher memory tiers compared to what the same memory would cost in a hardware market with actual competition like PCs.
ApocalypseShadow

They are all over the place as I said. And I knew they couldn’t stay with their pricing but try to sell Quest 3.

All this tech and no big AAA games. Definitely not a videogame company. That’s why the high quality games will be on PS VR 2.
- ViRGiN
  
  “will be” on PSVR2? PSVR2 is here, so where are the games?
  Instead we get Pavlov, and 3 dozen quest ports?
  PSVR2 can not even handle beat saber.
  Pavlov got dumbed down from PC. There is no more gore.
- shadow9d9
  
  AAA is generally garbage with great graphics, for the masses.
  - Ookami
    
    I have to agree with you–except for one correction: the vast majority is garbage with good graphics, but occasionally you get the gems that excel in gameplay and graphics (like Hogwarts Legacy, from what I see, or RDR2).
    Then again, you also get indie/small studios that do the same (Sons of the Forest, Hell Blade, etc), but I think those are even more of an exception.
  - MOT
    
    You should try Resident Evil 8 and GT7 on psvr2. Unbelievable games.
Andrew Jakobs

I’ll bet the pricedrop on the Pro has more to do with the new HTC headset, which will be in trouble now as there is hardly any reason to buy the XR over the Pro.
- ViRGiN
  
  No, Meta is clearly scared of Big Screen and Pimax, and Lynx R1.
  - Andrew Jakobs
    
    No they aren’t, especially Lynx is just a big junker, Pimax never really produces a solid headset at all, they keep pushing out new headsets without even supporting them. And Bigscreen is even more for enthousiasts as it is user specific and still a hefty price and will take long to deliver (weeks/months after you initially order it, according to their own ceo.)
    - ViRGiN
      
      You do know that i know all of this. It was just sarcastic.
MOT

They are trying to sell off quest 2 before it is superseded by the quest 3.

Most likely a lot of quest 3 games wont run on quest 2 just like a lot of quest 2 games wont run on quest 1.

Then in 2 years time we will have quest 4.

Its madness. There is no coherent strategy at all.
- Andrey
  
  I am not sure that we will have Quest 4 in two years. Because, based on rumors, in 2023 we will get a standard Quest 3, in 2024 – Quest 3 Lite and in 2025 – Quest Pro 2. I believe that there will be at least 3 years between new generations of “mainstream” Quests. And new features that will be added to Quest, will appear early in Pro series earlier.
  - MOT
    
    The problem remains though for the quest 3 to flourish developers will have to use it’s full power and feature set.
    
    This will mean leaving the quest 2 behind.
    
    There will be a lot of very sad quest 2 owners.
    - Andrey
      
      Well, I totally agree with your point, but at the same time – this is how life and, especially, progress works, so I personally can accept it pretty easily (in Quest 3 case it is 2-2.5x more powerful SoC and not 10-30% like current graphics cards/processors have with each new generation). Sooner or later we will need to abandon Quest 2 for more beautiful and big standalone games anyway. Sure there will be period of cross-gen games for one/two years, but as always it is a double-edge sword – the longer this period will be, the longer new games will be affected by Quest 2 weaker hardware). So I am totally fine if after a year (in 2025 as the latest) we will start getting Quest 3-only games.
shadow9d9

Wire and reprojection. Yuck.
NL_VR

Meta is the biggest player in VR
silvaring

What is going on with this comment thread… what a shitshow wow
tc tazyiksavar

I beliee Quest Pro shouldn’t be more than 700-800 but this is not a bad price neither. However, Quest 3 will make this device absolute.
JB1968

I’m selling “spitting in the face” for $500. All the early Quest Pro “vr enthusiasts” please line up for pre-orders asap. Limitted offer!
Lucidfeuer

The whole company, not just the VR part (they stole from Oculus founders)
Lucidfeuer

Hope the investors don’t have any milk to press from this trash company eventually
pasfish111

Even €1000 is too high for this device. It should cost €700 ;-)
FMT

If they will make Quest 3 with higher pixel density and switch to OLED, then it will be perfect to watch 3D movies like Avatar 2.
M0rph3u5

Meh, So glad I stuck with my beloved Index. Waiting for Valve’s next HMD or perhaps Vive Pro 3 if the former never makes it. Too bad PSVR2 didnt’ have PC support/DP as it pretty much ticked all the boxes. Silly move from Sony.
Screw Meta or FB or whatever the hell they’re gonna call themselves next. If only Pico4 had an DP