Quest Pro Is Now Officially Discontinued
January 6, 2025
Quest Pro is no longer available to buy from Meta, though stock is still available at some retailers.
Meta announced the retirement of both Quest 2 and Quest Pro at its Connect conference back in September, saying that the two headsets will no longer be available when stock runs out or at the end of the year, whichever comes first.
For Quest 2, stock ran out within a few weeks of Connect. For Quest Pro, it appears the other clause applied. With the arrival of the new year, the headset’s page on Meta’s website has been replaced with a “Meta Quest Pro is no longer available” notice, alongside an image and price of Quest 3, Meta’s new highest-end offering.
With Quest 2, Quest Pro, and the 128GB model of Quest 3 gone, Meta’s headset lineup has been simplified to:
- Quest 3S (128GB): $300
- Quest 3S (256GB): $400
- Quest 3 (512GB): $500
Quest Pro: A Pioneering Failure
After Quest 2 became the first mainstream VR headset, Meta hoped it could build on this success by introducing a high-end Quest to serve enthusiasts and businesses.
Quest Pro launched in late 2022 at $1500. It featured Meta’s first pancake lenses, QD-LCD displays with Mini-LED local dimming, eye tracking, face tracking, a curved battery in the rear of the strap, and the ringless self-tracking Touch Pro controllers.
In many ways Quest Pro was a pioneering headset. But in others it was severely lacking, given its price.
By the time Quest Pro launched, leaks of a Quest 3 arriving a year later with a twice as powerful GPU at half the price had already emerged, severely dampening the headset’s value proposition.
Further, Quest Pro’s underwhelming resolution, grainy passthrough, lack of ability to generate a scene mesh for mixed reality, and Meta’s cartoonish avatars not being detailed enough to do the face tracking sensors justice led to mixed-at-best reviews.
Just four months after Quest Pro launched Meta cut its price from $1500 to $1000. This kind of price cut so soon after launch was unprecedented, and strongly suggests the headset vastly missed its launch sales targets.
By around a year after launch Meta was giving away Quest Pro headsets to Roblox creators, when giving them a Quest 2 would have been perfectly fine. And last year Meta removed the whiteboard, which was designed around the pressure-sensitive stylus tips of Quest Pro’s controllers, from Horizon Workrooms.
Multiple developers have told UploadVR they see only a tiny fraction of their user base on Quest Pro. As such, almost no Quest game developers took the time to add support for its eye-tracked foveated rendering.
With Quest Pro off the market, Meta no longer sells any headsets with eye tracking or face tracking. It’s possible one of its Horizon OS partners, such as ASUS or Lenovo, will release a headset with these features some time later this year, and we’ll keep a close eye on those companies for any signs of that happening.
Search
RECENT PRESS RELEASES
Related Post