Data from Amazon US suggests that Quest headsets didn’t sell as well over Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2024 as compared to 2023.

Based on data from Amazon US, in 2023 about 170,000 Quest headsets had sold in the 30 day window surrounding Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In 2024, that number was around 146,000 Quest headsets, representing a drop in sales volume of 14%. This may not be representative of other retailers.

That’s a surprising outcome considering Meta just launched its new-and-improved Quest 3S, made a significant price cut to Quest 3, and had a flagship game with recognizable IP (Batman: Arkham Shadow) ready in time for Black Friday.

During the 2023 holiday shopping season, Meta was still selling its aging Quest 2 headset. That year’s Black Friday deal on the most popular version of the headset (128GB) was just $250 with a $50 gift card, making the headset essentially just $200.

That proved to be more popular at the time then this year’s deal in which Meta was pushing the Quest 3S (128GB) model for $300 with a $75 gift card, representing essentially a $225 purchase.

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That’s not a huge difference in cost, and from a value standpoint, the Quest 3S is far and away worth the $25 difference. However, price isn’t the only factor; broader economic factors and deals on competing products (not to mention changes in interest in VR overall) are all significant additional variables.

When it comes to the sales ratio between Quest 3S and Quest 3 during this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the headsets have sold around 3:1, similar to the ratio between Quest 2 and Quest 3 in 2023.

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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."
  • dextrovix

    Even as a regular VR user myself, I don't want to have the headset on my head for long periods, and I don't see VR ever growing more into widespread use because it's still impractical and bulky, even my Quest 3.

    Maybe this year with the economies of the world taking a downturn people who are casually interested in VR aren't prepared to spend their cash on VR.

    Perhaps sales are mainly from people who are upgrading, only I don't think any one "killer app" (e.g. Batman in this case) is going to make VR suddenly appeal to the masses now we're over a decade into VR availability, to suddenly shift headsets at substantial volumes.

  • Ivan

    To get a better understanding, how many Quest 3 devices were sold in the Black Friday/Cyber Monday period in 2023?

    It would be interesting to see if there was a change in how many Quest 3 devices were sold in this period in both years now that it has been a year since its release.

  • Michael Speth

    PSVR2 is on sale for $350 USD including Horizon. Quest 3 is $150 more or you spend $50 less and get a Quest 3S both with Batman.

    If you look at Horizon vs Batman, Horizon's graphics wins hands down. So perhaps people are choosing PSVR2 instead of Quest products.

    • BadHostile

      Horizon Call of the Mountain is a boring climbing simulator with crap gameplay, don't even try to compare it to the brilliant Batman Arkham Shadow, lol :D

    • VR5

      While I don't think Horizon had much to do with it (it's great but not as good as Batman), PSVR2 did sport the higher price drop so while Quest is selling well all year round, for BF it was the time to buy a PSVR2. Quest mostly holding steady despite no outstanding reductions is not really a bad sign, I'd be worried if it sold badly outside of BF though.

  • vr games feel like work they not fun. only a small group of people find standing in the middle of a room waving their hands around fun. u would think we would have learnt from the wii, the move, and kinect. stop trying to make people move around to enjoy a video game.

    • gothicvillas

      It's about being inside the game

  • Dragon Marble

    Casual consumers during the holiday season are much more sensitive to price difference than quality difference. Hopefully Q3S's relative strength over Q2 will manifest later in the form of higher retention and sustained sales.

  • ShaneMcGrath

    Replace Quest 3 with anything, Let's face it most people don't have as much disposable income to throw around at ANYTHING, Let alone luxury items.

  • Bram

    The main dutch reseller for quest headsets shows that after 1.5 month of it's release, only 8 people reviewed the quest3s vs 296 reviews for the quest3! That also shows the 3s really isn't selling well compared to it's better equipped more expensive older brother. It's only 2.7 percent of q3 selling figures since it's launched last year. And there also seem to be no reason this will change for the better now black friday is already behind us. What will this mean for Meta's future strategy is the big question. Meta already stated that the regular quest3 was selling better than expected and the retention rate is higher with the better q3 headset than the cheaper quest 2. So will Meta abandon the budget version of the quest and push more for higher end headsets in the range of 500 to 1000 dollar?

  • Nevets

    Comfort, comfort, comfort. Out of the box. Until this becomes a priority, people either won't use it, or they'll use it for short periods and feel physical relief when they remove the clamp from their head. (And make no mistake there are many strides possible here, even with current hardware).