“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 wager its future,” reviews 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 also be reducing the value of its Quest 2 headset from $499.99 to $429.99. The worth reduce for the Quest 2 will go into impact in additional than a dozen nations together with the US on Sunday. The Quest Professional value drop will take impact the identical day in the US and Canada and on March 15 in all different nations the place it’s offered.
“Our objective has all the time been to create {hardware} that is inexpensive for as many individuals as attainable to reap the benefits of all that VR has to supply,” the corporate stated in a weblog put up.
Yahoo Finance believes Meta is reducing costs “as a result of shoppers are, properly, 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.
“when you take a look at the Quest 2, which most individuals use for taking part in video games, as a sport console, it is performed fairly properly.”
Mark Rabkin, Meta’s vp for VR, instructed workers that Meta has offered over 20 million Quest headsets up to now. That features each the Quest and Quest 2…. That looks as if a small quantity, however the Nintendo GameCube solely offered 21 million consoles in its total lifespan, and the Xbox Collection X and S are estimated to have offered roughly 20 million consoles up to now. So when you take a look at the Quest 2, which most individuals use for taking part in video games, as a sport console, it is performed fairly properly.
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 sort of ignoring that core gamer viewers.”