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Gaming hardware prices usually get cheaper over time. But Meta is bucking that trend and raising the price of its entry-level Quest 2 VR headset by $100. The company formerly known as Facebook says it’s to help pay for innovation, a move that comes as Mark Zuckerberg’s social media company struggles to fend off the rise of TikTok and billions in recent losses.
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Starting in August, the Meta Quest 2 will drop from $300 to $400 for the 128GB model and $400 to $500 for the 256GB model. Meta wrote in a post announcing the change that “billions of dollars have been invested to help fuel a thriving virtual reality ecosystem” since the early days of PC and mobile, and that the massive price increase “will help “. [it] continue investing for the long term.”
The point of pricing the Meta Quest 2 so low to begin with, the same as the Nintendo Switch but for a wireless VR headset, was to aggressively push early adoption and help lift a market that’s has been stagnant for years. With the $100 increase, the Quest 2 will still be the cheapest headset on the market, but the 33% increase will still put the entry-level tech out of reach for many more people.
While it’s a tough pill to swallow for a company that made more than $7 billion in profit last quarter, the temporary pullback isn’t shocking given the recent market turmoil. Meta’s stock price has halved since the start of 2022. New privacy changes instituted on Apple devices cost the company about $10 billion in revenue. An overhaul of Facebook and Instagram apps to try to copy TikTok has led to a very public backlash from the Kardashians.
Meta has been burning billions to advance VR technology over the past two years, but with his empire facing existential challenges, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is preparing employees for a more brutal era of corporate austerity. Instead of cutting R&D funding, raising prices is a way to keep your bet on a lucrative virtual reality metaverse.
“We can cut funding for future things, or we can have more pain in terms of profitability a little less,” he told staff last month amid threats of layoffs, according to The Verge. “Constitutionally, it’s more painful for me to slow down the progress we’re making in the long term than to have a difficult period in the short term.”
Meanwhile, Meta is gearing up to launch its high-end Project Cambria headphones later this year. And while associated projects like Splinter Cell VR were recently canceled, the Ghostbusters, Among Us, and The Walking Dead VR games are still in the works. So is Sony’s new PSVR 2 headset. Still without a price or a release date, the PS5 maker has continued to tease new details about the updated technology.