Meta’s Quest Pro VR Headset Gets a $500 Price Cut

Meta is dropping the price of its $1,499.99 Quest Pro VR headset, which will be available for $999.99 in the US and Canada starting this Sunday, March 5 (via Engadget). In other countries where it’s available, the premium VR headset will see its price drop on March 15.

Meta will also be cutting the price of the 256GB version of its Quest 2 headset from $499.99 to $429.99. The price cut for the cheaper headset will go into effect on March 5 in all markets.

According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the discounted prices should help “more people get into VR.” In the company’s hardware roadmap leaked by The Verge earlier this week, Meta reportedly plans to launch a next-gen Quest 3 headset later this year that will be “two times thinner, at least twice as powerful, and cost slightly more than the $400 Quest 2.”

Speaking at an internal VR roadmap presentation earlier this week, Meta’s vice president for VR Mark Rabkin acknowledged that engagement with Meta’s Quest 2 headset wasn’t at the level where the company would like it to be. “Right now, we’re on our third year of Quest 2,” Rabking told employees. “And sadly, the newer cohorts that are coming in, the people who bought it this last Christmas, they’re just not as into it” or engaged as “the ones who bought it early.”

While Mark Zuckerberg made a huge bet on the Metaverse becoming the next big thing, pivoting the company towards this uncertain future has become quite costly. Meta’s Reality Labs division is massive amounts of money every quarter, and it lost a total of $13.72 billion in 2022.

Meta did manage to become an early leader in the VR market thanks to its acquisition of Oculus back in 2014. However, Apple is expected to join the competition later this year with its first mixed-reality headset that will let users switch between augmented reality and virtual reality.