One of the most ambitious VR products, Meta Quest Pro, is facing an early demise. According to reports, Meta has decided to stop producing professional-grade headsets at the end of this year. The tech giant will focus on more budget-friendly headsets.
The Quest Pro was launched last year as a high-end device that could offer both VR and AR experiences, but it failed to impress consumers. The reports claim that Meta informed its suppliers about the halt in production after receiving negative feedback and low sales figures for the device.
Meta informed its suppliers that it would stop ordering new parts for the Quest Pro. As a result, Goertek, the manufacturer, will only produce Quest Pro headsets until the existing materials run out. This implies that Quest Pro will be phased out.
The VR headset offers several improvements over its predecessor Quest 2. It has a 50% more powerful processor, a higher resolution display, and a wider color gamut. It also supports full-color mixed reality and has additional sensors for tracking eye and face movements. However, Quest Pro’s $1,500 price tag has raised most concerns. Since January, Quest Pro has been discounted – it cost $1,100, and after a few months, the price dropped to $1,000. Despite the cheaper value, the headset still did not seem to attract many buyers. Moreover, Meta announced the launch of Quest 3 later this year, which will cost $500.
Besides, Meta Quest 3 is expected to be better than Quest Pro in some attributes. It will have a more powerful processor, higher resolution display, better lenses, and support for more features. In addition, a leaked roadmap in March hinted that a future successor to Quest Pro might enable Codec Avatars (a futuristic VR conferencing technology) in the far future.
After Meta announced Quest Pro, critics speculated that the headset would not be adopted by many due to its high price. An expert told Metaverse Post last October that “the $1,500 price tag and the marketing ploy seem to be aimed at businesses and professionals” rather than everyday consumers.
Low Sales for Quest Pro
According to leaked data from Q4 2022, Meta’s Quest 2 generated $477 million in revenue. With an average selling price of $429, this suggests that about 1.113 million units were sold in that period.
On the other hand, Quest Pro brought in $38 million in revenue. The average selling price was $1,499 before it was reduced later in the first quarter of 2023. That means about 25,080 units were sold in the fourth quarter of last year. Even though the data is only from a specific period, the numbers indicate that Quest 2 was significantly more popular than Quest Pro.
VR and the Metaverse Face Challenges
Analyst firm Gartner recently shared that the metaverse industry is flopping, and users are slow to adopt metaverse-related technology. It reported that non-gaming applications of VR are struggling to meet the demand for large-scale experiences. Moreover, the current state of avatar-based immersive meetings is not convincing enough to support long-term metaverse interactions.
According to the report, the metaverse has low adoption due to physical discomfort, privacy concerns, and high VR hardware costs. Improvements to hardware and VR collaboration are in the early experimental stages, limiting scalability. Virtual experiences are siloed, making marketers wary of their data contributions. Virtual meetings are seen as distracting and of uncertain long-term value. Low-fidelity avatars hinder the immersive experience, requiring expensive hardware for better synchronization.
Reports from early this year said that VR gaming adoption is also relatively slow. Sony reduced the production of gaming-focused PS VR2, which launched in February, due to low pre-order numbers. Furthermore, the Game Developers Conference reported that developers are still skeptical about metaverse gaming.
Meta’s Stock is Stable
Meta’s stock price increased 1.27% to $316.01 on Wednesday, July 19, marking a three-day rise. The stock has risen 153% since the year started, thanks to the company’s AI advancements and the new app Threads. Currently, the Quest Pro discontinuation did not have a noticeable effect on Meta’s stock. Tech stocks, including Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Alphabet, have performed exceptionally in the past months.
Source: mPost
