“Meta is reducing costs for 2 of its digital actuality headsets because it continues attempting to spice up adoption for the nascent know-how on which it has guess its future,” stories CNN:
The corporate introduced Friday that it’s slashing the value of its higher-end Meta Quest Professional headset by some $500, bringing its value to $999, roughly six months after it was launched. Meta can also be reducing the value of its Quest 2 headset from $499.99 to $429.99. The value reduce for the Quest 2 will go into impact in additional than a dozen nations together with america on Sunday. The Quest Professional value drop will take impact the identical day in america and Canada and on March 15 in all different nations the place it’s bought.
“Our aim has all the time been to create {hardware} that is inexpensive for as many individuals as doable to make the most of all that VR has to supply,” the corporate stated in a weblog publish.
Yahoo Finance believes Meta is reducing costs “as a result of customers are, nicely, simply not shopping for as many as the corporate anticipated.” The Verge agrees that the Meta Quest Professional was “an absolute boondoggle of a tool” — however means that’s not the entire story.
“in case you have a look at the Quest 2, which most individuals use for taking part in video games, as a sport console, it is carried out moderately nicely.”
Mark Rabkin, Meta’s vice chairman for VR, instructed employees that Meta has bought over 20 million Quest headsets to this point. That features each the Quest and Quest 2…. That looks as if a small quantity, however the Nintendo GameCube solely bought 21 million consoles in its total lifespan, and the Xbox Sequence X and S are estimated to have bought roughly 20 million consoles to this point. So in case you have a look at the Quest 2, which most individuals use for taking part in video games, as a sport console, it is carried out moderately nicely.
Their conclusion? “Meta may need large ambitions for VR headsets and their place within the metaverse, however the actuality is that the highest software program on the Quest 2 are all video games…. And whereas Meta is thrusting metaverse experiences onto customers, it is type of ignoring that core gamer viewers.”
