Meta is cutting prices for its VR headsets | Hacker News Reader

Meta is cutting prices for its VR headsets

cnn.com

29 pointsCharlesW79 comments

> The company announced Friday that it is slashing the price of its higher-end Meta Quest Pro headset by some $500, bringing its cost to $999, roughly six months after it was released. Meta is also lowering the price of its Quest 2 headset from $499.99 to $429.99.

It's a start, still kind of expensive; it will be nice for some people who have been on the fence and missed promotional sales.

Nintendo hasn't traditionally lowered the prices of their units in favor of releasing a 'Lite' version which has worked out pretty well for them things considered - but they are more known for being in the gaming space as compared to Meta:

- Nintendo Switch Lite ($199) vs Nintendo Switch ($300)

- Nintendo 2DS (~$80-130) vs Nintendo 3DS ($250)

Even though 2DS was originally meant for younger kids - it was still really exciting for me to get one since I was newly living on my own during freshman year and bought it myself so that I could play ORAS with my friends who had the nicer DS consoles.

VR seems interesting - maybe just a bit too committed for how I like to play - but I know better than to think my anecdote means anything at the end of the day, there are a lot of people out there excited beyond belief for future development in this domain!

Edit: saw a comment that highlighted an earlier price increase which means these are now being 'discounted' again which is kind of lame and discouraging.

July 2022 they raised the price, used to get a baseline Quest 2 for $299, this is still more expensive at $429?? no thanks.

The baseline model doesn't exist anymore. That's the older 64 gig model. They ditched it, and added a 256gb one. The price of the 128gb one is 400 currently, and the 256gb one is 500. This is going to drop the 256 to 429. I have no clue what's happening to the 128gb model, I wouldn't be surprised if they cancel it.

Used to go on Facebook marketplace for $150, I sold for $175 (boxed) which I got free. (Yes, Got 2 free. Kept one and even kids rarely use).

How about cutting the ludicrous meta account requirement to utilize the hardware?

I coveted the quest until that requirement. Now it's a non entity. Got a psvr; good enough.

is it possible to use a PSVR without a Playstation Account?

> is it possible to use a PSVR without a Playstation Account?

I think so; you can't use a Playstation online without a Playstation account, but my understanding is that you can use PSVR as a PC VR device without one.

Trinius on the PC will let you leverage other headsets.

Don't think it has any of the hand tracking with the camera.

You still need a console, but no ps account required.

Possibly related: Mark Zuckerberg Quietly Buries the Metaverse

https://www.thestreet.com/technology/mark-zuckerberg-quietly...

that's because he bet on crypto+metaverse being web3, and was about a year too early, the REAL web3 is AI.

TBH, Zuck's version didn't mention anything web3/crypto related, it's just a walled garden in Oculus VR.

I'm very close at purchasing a Oculus for my wife, but the Facebook account requirement is a stopper, as we're both banned for life from Facebook for unknown reasons. Is it still the case that you need a Facebook account to use them?

you just need a meta account, no longer tied to facebook, though you can link if you'd like.

Do people really believe that Meta isn't correlating/linking Meta accounts to Facebook accounts regardless of user consent?

I don't understand why we should trust this company to not do shady shit with user data

If you don't trust meta why would you have a facebook account to correlate or link to?

They don’t need a Facebook account. A shadow profile of them could be created by Facebook

One way or another, they can detect "duplicate" accounts I'm guessing, so my fear is that because my Facebook account has been banned, so will the "Meta" account as soon as they realize it's the same owner.

I've had a quest 2 for over a year now and do not have a facebook account. It was possible to set the device up using a oculus developer account before, and a meta account now. You want dev mode enabled so that you can sideload apps anyway.

I think that the Quest pro is very attractive at the new price, it is a great standalone and pcvr headset.

The "Oculus Developer Account" and "Meta Account" is different than a Facebook account then? And if Facebook banned your Facebook account, there is no risk of them banning your Meta account? What I'm worried about is Facebook linking them together somehow and banning the Meta account used for the headset, rendering it useless.

I created new account, just for VR. Not adding any friend. I know, Meta algorithms will be able to find identity easily with WiFi/Location info.

Even a free one wouldn't be enough since it's tied to a facebook account.

it's not anymore, though

They've flipped on that decision before though, I wouldn't trust it.

VR is just a gimmick. Even Meta employees working on Horizon Worlds are barely using it to the point where a SVP had to start asking "why not?"

I have 4 quest headsets, and though they are fun to play (especially Beat Saber with Beat Sage), in the end it's just too cumbersome and too much of a commitment.

Price is an issue, but even among people I know who already have one, usage drops steeply after a month or two. Meta themselves pointed this out, noting that even though they have sold 20 million Quests, they only have about 300K active users for Horizon World's and in general they've seen a huge dropoff in engagement across all apps and the Quest itself after a while.

This move is no surprise if you've read their comments on Reality Labs in the last earnings.

> I have 4 headsets but I really hate VR

never said I hate VR - I said it's cumbersome, which it is.

People said the Wii was just a gimmick and that shifted more than a hundred million units with plenty of people playing it regularly.

Contrary to popular belief, there is a big market for consoles that are engaging at the more casual end of gaming.

I don't see how the Wii and the Quest are comparable at all other than the fact that you can play games with them.

That’s a pretty significant “other than” given that the vast majority of Quest 2 sales are for gaming. ;)

Even Meta market the Quest 2 as an entertainment device. (I do appreciate that the Quest Pro is marketed differently, but it’s also barely selling in comparison to other entertainment-orientated VR headsets).

If that's the comparison then we should compare total software sales. It's not even close. The Wii has probably sold near two orders of magnitude more games. We're talking about the Nintendo Wii almost two decades after its release. I highly doubt anyone will be talking about the Quest 2 in 2040.

You’re just making an assumptions now. You might be right but at this stage your point is still just speculation.

Also my point wasn’t that the Quest 2 will be as seminal as the Wii. It was that what people on HN might consider a gimmick with little longevity isn’t always what regular people buying these things think. So it might not be the Quest 2 that lasts. Or it might be numerous different brands of headsets, sharing relatively equal market shares, but you can bet plenty of average consumers are enjoying VR.

> People said the Wii was just a gimmick and that shifted more than a hundred million units

This is several orders of magnitude less than the problem Zuckerberg is facing right now: in order to prop up the stock price, he needs to keep attention of 3 billion users who will otherwise slowly drift away and ruin the main business.

Indeed. But that’s a separate problem to the one the GP raised.

Why are you equating Horizon worlds with vr? It's just one of many use cases, and it's obvious that social vr can only work outside niches after mass adoption was catalyzed by other uses cases.

I am not equating them, Meta considers Horizon their flagship app and so that's what I'm mentioning.

It's their social vr app, but meta knows very well that other uses cases drive vr now. Why do you think they are spending billions on acquiring game studios?

The quest 3 will be released end of this year it a price point that is most likely slightly above that of the quest 2 (500ish ?). According to the leaks, it will have better video path through / mixed reality capabilities and a faster processor than the quest pro and share it's pancake lenses. The only features that are still exclusive to the quest pro would be eye&face-tracking, controllers with inside out tracking and possibility a mini-led display backlight. Probably nothing that people would spend an additional $1000 on.

My guess is that they are trying to clear stock.

I realized why VR is doomed when I sat in the front row of an imax movie of Avatar. It totally reminded me of Oculus—and made me think “wait, do I want to look around? Does that actually improve my experience at all?”

Also, if VR made sense, why is it still more fun to play games where you see your character vs games where you look out the eyes of your character?

Also, VR is an awful social experience. No fun for other people in the room. Except for poking the VR dork in the belly, hehe

—debbie downer

I took my headset with me when I had to be away from home for a month in a place where I couldn't bring or buy external monitors. Having multiple relatively-low-res virtual monitors through the headset was very valuable. Occasionally replaying RE4 in VR since then was just icing on the cake.

So, you’ve never tried it and hate it. Gotcha.

Oh, and it’s also not viable because of your own preferences in games (nevermind that there are non fpv games)?

Did I miss anything?

EDIT: Personally, I love it. It is definitely an experience you have to try, imo, before you’re able to judge it. Beat Sabre, Alyx, Moss… they just scratch the surface of what can be done.

I’ve played Beat Sabre and a few other games from my kid. But nothing was compelling, for me. Like, they ate fun to try a few times but more as a novelty. My point is that there seems to be very little entertainment benefit of “surround vision.”

We're coming up on the five year anniversary of beat saber. I wonder how many years until people stop pointing to it as an example of the potential of VR.

The sad part is that it’s still one of the very best VR experiences out there.

The problem is that few others have been able to replicate is success. It’s kind odd like Tetris.

They could cut it too 0 and I still wouldn’t want it. I don’t need my personal info monitored repackaged and sold by Meta.

You still can't watch adult material (or anything, really) without Zuck looking over your shoulder.

The concept of VR pornography completely evaded me until now. Goodness, that’s an interesting use case.

The first time I tried VR was at a local programming meetup held in a very famous porn company's office, where some company was demoing VR headsets together with selected clips + offering conversation with the actresses from said clips.

Highly recommended. It's not totally a dialup vs DSL thing where you can't go back once you've had the good stuff, but it's close. It's extremely immersive and the novelty doesn't wear off (at least to me) like it does with the fake-3d cinema movies.

It's still somewhat exclusive though, so for anyone who is into more niche things it might be disappointing, but for everyone else: strong buy. I don't know why it hasn't taken off more, but maybe the video-pricing is too expensive if you don't pirate it.

https://github.com/basti564/Oculess

Is this a closeout sale as Meta exits VR, or a price cut because of increased production volume?

I reckon this is Meta finally getting it in their heads that mass adoption is only gonna happen if the device is cheap enough.

John Carmack was very vocal about that when he was still involved with Meta.

I’d bet Meta’s best chance of winning here would be to build a great software and games ecosystem and sell the devices at a loss, just like game consoles.

They raised the quest 2 price $100 not too long ago. It still costs more than it use to even after this price cut.

Keep in mind though that upon release the $300 entry level version was 64GB and now the entry level is 128GB at $400

Go and the Quest were the cheapest devices on the market. I think they’re already one step ahead of you here.

closeout on Quest2's and Pros as the next gen starts production.

The Pro came out in November. It’s not about to get superseded with a new version. It’s just that the reviews have been really negative and the price is too high, so they’re trying to correct to fix demand.

They can't exit VR, they've spent way too much of their political capital on in (not to mention actual capital).

My guess: the Quest 2 drop is because PSVR just came out and they want to be a clear winner on price, and the Quest Pro drop is because they've seen soft demand.

I don't know anyone who has a Pro, I know quite a few who got a 2 at the original price, and I'd probably have bought a 2 by now if it hadn't gone up in price.

I thought Zuckerberg had unassailable control of the company. Investors may not like what he is doing, but he can change his mind on a dime, and there is little anyone can do about it.

While I have not seen any Must Have use case for VR (nor does the technology currently seem fit for purpose) - I do appreciate the rationale for trying to trail-blaze this space. Facebook is subject to the whims of iOS and Android policy. They need/want to own a platform they control.

We'll see what happens next, but there was way too much hype around that move (renaming the entire company!) Pivoting now would make him look completely clueless (and alienate even more e.g. talent). Besides, he would have to suggest the next big thing to pivot to, and what would that be?

Zuckerberg has full _direct_ control, but also the majority of his net worth is in Meta shares, so he's strongly incentivised to do things that investors like.

I’m personally waiting for the Quest 3.

Option #3: a desperate move to drive adoption, potentially at the cost of their own profit margin.

With the amount they’ve spent so far I think they should have just literally gave them away.

Adoption is how they improve their profit margin. The more products they have wearing their HMD, the better.

Long-term, sure, you've just described what a loss leader is.

I'm referring to short-to-medium term margin on the devices themselves.

Likely yes. Considering that the pandemic was near perfect for VR, they are probably seeing contraction of their user base now. Even with perfect market conditions in 2022, that division of Meta reported $13.7 billion in operating losses for Reality Labs.

Meta is def. not exiting VR

My guess, a sneaky way of getting rid of the 128gig sku. Cheaper to just have one product line, and it does cost slightly more then the old baseline one (128gig). The quest pro is probably because no one is buying it.

I understand Zuckerberg to be all-in on this, and still sees it as largely a long-term thing (10 years), I think all the short-term takes on their status miss the Mark in terms of what's going on inside Facebook.

The fair price for one of these devices is somewhere between ‘free’ and $100.

The mind boggles at the concept of paying Meta $1000 for the privilege of capturing (and controlling) everything your eyes see and everything your ears hear.

Don't connect it to the internet is an option. Games can be sideloaded from a PC.

Its reminicent of the time that Google started cutting prices and literally giving away Stadia kit. Its probably a precursor to the end of the "metaverse" experiment.

The price is only propaganda. Before long it will be given away for free because they will have monetized all of human behavior.

Is this a last ditch attempt at getting more traction for the Metaverse?

hmmm.. i think i got the Q2 for $300 or so

All I care about is if they're open yet. I really don't like the required tie-ins to facebook etm.

I'd be less price sensitive if I knew they could be used 5 or so years from now, after they get bored with this thing.

PCVR will always be an option with these headsets.

There is no tie-ins to facebook

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