Meta has formally discontinued Quest Professional, the corporate’s first combined actuality headset.
Meta introduced again in September that it was winding down Quest 2 and Quest Professional gross sales. On the time, the corporate mentioned remaining inventory can be bought by the top of the 12 months or till they ran out, whichever got here first.
Now, instead of the Quest Professional order web page, Meta is suggesting customers to purchase Quest 3 “for the last word combined actuality expertise and premium consolation.” You possibly can nonetheless purchase Quest Professional’s ‘Contact Professional’ controllers nonetheless, as they help Quest 2 and above.
Launched in 2022 on the eye-water worth of $1,500, Meta hoped to make use of the headset to kickstart its combined actuality ambitions amongst shoppers, because it was the primary to supply color-passthrough, pancake lenses, and each face and eye-tracking—coming in sturdy distinction to the corporate’s different providing on the time, Quest 2.
Practically a 12 months after launch, it was obvious the Professional-level headset wasn’t interesting to customers almost to the diploma Meta had initially hoped, prompting the corporate to knock Quest Professional right down to $1,000. To complicate issues, excessive preliminary pricing of Quest Professional put a pressure on builders, which resulted in only a few compelling MR experiences out of the gate.
It was clear what was wanted was a extra accessible headset. In October 2023, Meta launched Quest 3, which housed a lot of the tech seen in Quest Professional—minus face and eye-tracking, and on the beginning worth of $499.
Clamping down but additional on price-performance, Meta launched Quest 3S a 12 months later, which homes the identical Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset as Quest 3, though together with the identical cost-saving Fresnel lenses and shows as Quest 2—marking the corporate’s most energetic push to capitalize on its combined actuality ambitions.
Whereas Meta’s technique to seize the console price-point with Quest has been a successful technique so far, what’s unsure is whether or not the corporate will head again into the ‘Professional’ pricing construction anytime quickly. The Info reported earlier final 12 months that Meta was cancelling a possible Quest Professional follow-up, nonetheless Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth partically refuted these claims, noting that “there may be a Quest Professional 2, there may not be. I’m not likely telling you, however I’ll say don’t consider all the pieces you examine what’s been stopped or began.”
