Two months after it announced plans to discontinue its high-end Quest Pro VR/XR headset, Meta has stopped selling its remaining inventory of the device, which saw prices of between $1,000 and $1,500 over the short course of its life. And that has once again thrust virtual reality headsets into a spotlight.
A decade ago, they were heralded as the next great thing, with Meta paying $2 billion in 2014 to acquire Oculus and buying a suite of VR development studios in the years that followed. Apple’s entry into the market last year with the Vision Pro got enthusiasts excited once again.
But the end of the Meta Quest Pro is again raising questions about the viability of high-end VR in the consumer marketplace. And with Meta’s top headset now nothing but a memory, eyes turn to Apple.
The Apple Vision Pro costs $3,500 and up. A year ago it was Apple’s biggest new product of the past 10 years. Since then, enthusiasm has faded. Apple has not released sales numbers for the device and did not reply to Fast Company’s request for comment, but in October, the Wall Street Journal reported sales have been disappointing, with Apple reportedly cutting its first year shipments roughly in half.
The VR market, overall, is in flux, at best. Headset sales were down in the first two quarters of 2024, but rebounded slightly in the third quarter, according to IDC Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker. Meta still has more than a 70% market share and Apple’s sales numbers did not drive the Q3 growth.
The Vision Pro did get some good news at CES this week, though. Nvidia announced Monday that its GeForce Now game-streaming service would be coming to the headset later this month, giving owners access to more than 2,100 AAA video games without the need for a separate computer. (The service is also coming to Meta’s Quest 3 and the Pico headset.)
Nvidia also said it was using the Vision Pro to help humanoid robots learn automated tasks. And Wicked director Jon Chu gave the headset a positive spin when he announced he had used the Vision Pro to view and give feedback on edits of the movie.
“I can’t tell you what a revelation this was,” he said. “This is big stakes, cutting-edge productivity work that is available to use today! I am still shook. I don’t think people fully realize the amount of workflow breakthroughs I think the Vision Pro will lead to.”
Accolades like that may not help grow the consumer audience base but for now, Apple is largely chasing professionals, as the price of the device is still well out of reach for most people. And the Vision Pro’s app store reflects that, with a shrinking number of native apps for the headset.
“At $3,500, it’s not a mass-market product,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told the WSJ in October. “Right now, it’s an early-adopter product. People who want to have tomorrow’s technology today—that’s who it’s for. Fortunately, there’s enough people who are in that camp that it’s exciting.”
Apple seemingly isn’t close to throwing in the towel, though, despite Meta abandoning its high-end VR product. A cheaper version of the Vision Pro is still in the works, said analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on X. While that has seemingly been pushed back to 2027, an upgraded version of the Vision Pro with a faster processor is still expected this year, she added.
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