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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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