Meta may be phasing out stock of the Meta Quest 2 permanently, signalling the end of an era for mainstream virtual reality.
The original Quest headset has also just taken another major step towards the digital graveyard.
Meta’s online stores across the world have run out of stock of the Quest 2, the one notable exception being the UK, which still has the 128GB variant available for £199.
The Quest 2 headset has reportedly sold upwards of 20 million units to date, making it comfortable the most popular mainstream VR headset ever. Sony’s original PlayStation VR has sold somewhere in the region of five million units.
The more important question for existing Quest 2 owners is when actual support for the 2020 headset will wind down.
In truth, this has already begun. A number of games have been announced for Quest 3 but not Quest 2, including Batman: Arkham Shadow and Alien: Rogue Incursion.
Meta is likely to put in place a fairly severe support cut-off for the Quest 2 at some point in the future, as it did with the predecessor. The first Quest’s cessation of support was announced in 2023, and on June 29 2024 Meta announced the end of hardware support for the headset, on August 31.
“You will still be able to download new apps and continue using your existing apps as long as they are supported by the developer. However, if any security vulnerabilities are discovered in the future, private data that is directly stored on the device or accessible from it would be at risk of compromise,” Meta said in a statement.
These modern VR headsets sure aren’t like the games consoles of old. However, the Quest 2 seems likely to get significantly longer lifetime support than the original Quest thanks to its huge user base.
There is a balance to be struck here — Meta will want to nudge users into upgrading to a newer Quest where possible. But doing so too aggressively could effectively massively reduce the total addressable audience.
This upgrade may not cost as much as you might imagine too. Meta is expected to launch a budget version of the Meta Quest 3 later this year, the Quest 3S or Quest 3 Lite. It’s likely to upgrade the processor and add color passthrough, without including all the expensive upgrades of the standard Quest 3.
