“Meta is slicing 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 wager its future,” studies CNN:
The corporate introduced Friday that it’s slashing the value of its higher-end Meta Quest Professional headset by some $500, bringing its price to $999, roughly six months after it was launched. Meta can be decreasing the value of its Quest 2 headset from $499.99 to $429.99. The worth minimize for the Quest 2 will go into impact in additional than a dozen nations together with the USA on Sunday. The Quest Professional worth drop will take impact the identical day in the USA and Canada and on March 15 in all different nations the place it’s bought.
“Our objective has all the time been to create {hardware} that is reasonably priced for as many individuals as attainable to reap the benefits of all that VR has to supply,” the corporate mentioned in a weblog publish.
Yahoo Finance believes Meta is decreasing costs “as a result of shoppers 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 suggests that is not the entire story.
“should you have a look at the Quest 2, which most individuals use for enjoying video games, as a recreation console, it is executed fairly nicely.”
Mark Rabkin, Meta’s vice chairman for VR, advised workers 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 complete lifespan, and the Xbox Sequence X and S are estimated to have bought roughly 20 million consoles to this point. So should you have a look at the Quest 2, which most individuals use for enjoying video games, as a recreation console, it is executed fairly nicely.
Their conclusion? “Meta might 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 form of ignoring that core gamer viewers.”
