Meta’s new $199 Quest 2 price is a steal for the VR-curious

Meta announced that it is permanently reducing the price of its aging Quest 2 headset to $199 for a base 128GB model, marking the company’s lowest price ever for a full-featured, tetherless VR headset .

The Quest 2, launched in 2020 at $299, defied technology product conventions by increasing its MSRP at $399 due to inflation and supply chain issues in mid-2022. However, actual retail headset prices have since fallen; Best Buy offered new units for $299 last October and for $250 by the 2023 shopping season after Thanksgiving, for example.

And the Quest 2 is far from the company’s most advanced headset at this point. Meta launched the surprisingly expensive Quest Pro in late 2022 before dropping the price of that headset from $1,499 to $999 less than five months later. And last year’s launch of the Quest 3 at a starting price of $499 brought significant improvements in resolution, processing power, thickness, and color transfer images over the Quest 2.

But for how long ?

Those looking to get the Quest 2 at its new MSRP should keep in mind that Meta may not plan to support the aging headset long term. Meta is currently ending support for the original Quest headset, which launched in 2019 and no longer has access to important online features, security updates, and even new apps. The Quest 2 is only 18 months younger than the original Quest, and the new price could represent an effort to clear out outdated inventory in favor of newer, more powerful Quest options.

Then again, many developers are still targeting apps and games at the relatively large audience of the Quest 2, which has sold around 15 million units through mid-2022, roughly on par with the Xbox Series S| X around the same time. . But there are signs that Quest 2 software is selling relatively slower than hardware numbers suggest, amid reports that many Quest buyers are no longer active users. And Meta continues to lose a lot of money in the VR segment, while Sony is reportedly halted production of the PSVR2 headset connected to the PS5 due to lower-than-expected demand. The Quest 2’s new price is the first time Meta has offered a headset below the “$250, 250 grams” target that former Meta CTO John Carmack once envisioned for a “super cheap headset and super light” which could attract the mass market (the Quest 2 weighs 503 grams). The new price is also incredibly cheap considering that just six or seven years ago, VR-curious consumers could easily end up paying $1,500 or more (in 2024 dollars) for a headset high-end connected and “VR-ready”. computer needed to power it.