Last week, a report from The Information suggested that Meta is reducing Quest Pro production with a view to killing the high-end line altogether.
Now Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth has hit back at the claim, while at the same time not exactly denying that the Quest Pro may indeed be the last of its line. His message? It’s too early to tell.
“I have to explain this every year,” Bosworth began in a now-expired post on Instagram Stories, captured by Road to VR. “There is no Quest Pro 2 headset until we decide there is.
“What I mean by that is there are lots of prototype headsets — lots of them — all in development in parallel. Some of them, we say, ‘that’s not the right one,’ and we shut it down. Some of them, we say, ‘that’s the right one,’ and we spin it up. What you need to understand is, until it goes out the door, it doesn’t get the name.”
That sounds an awful lot like semantics, which doesn’t necessarily go against the thrust of The Information’s story. And the next line isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of the line’s future either: “There might be a Quest Pro 2, there might not be. I’m not really telling you, but I will say don’t believe everything you read about what’s been stopped or started.”
He concluded the post by implying that The Information’s source might be a disgruntled employee upset that their particular VR project won’t be pursued. “A lot of times it comes from someone who’s unhappy their particular project got cut when there are other projects that did not get cut,” he wrote.
A non-denial, but hope for Meta
That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement for the Meta Quest Pro’s future, but then things haven't looked great for Meta's high-end headset for some time.
Bluntly, you don’t slash a third off the MSRP of a product after just 129 days if it’s selling brilliantly. Even at $999, it’s a tough ask during a cost-of-living crisis, so it’s hard to believe its fortunes have been transformed in the last four months. In short, it would be bizarre if Meta were pushing Quest Pro development hard, given the circumstances.
But there is hope, and oddly it comes from a rival: Apple. The Vision Pro not only makes the Meta Quest Pro look like a bargain with its $3,500 price tag, but Apple is one of the few companies on the planet that can spark interest in a product category just by entering the market.
In other words, if Apple creates a buzz around mixed reality then it could yet be Meta that benefits as consumers adopt a more wallet-friendly Pro vision of the metaverse. And through that prism, it makes sense for Boswell to rule nothing out for now.
