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Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

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Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#251

Post by ilaksh »

FractalHQ wrote: post #209
yonaguska wrote: post #3

As much as I wanted to get into VR, Meta taking over the Quest has thankfully saved me countless sunken dollars and hours.

I bought two recently for my parents and they don’t use them. I tried to use them but there are no real VR games to play. All of the games are arcade-style mini games with 20 year-old graphics. They get boring after a couple minutes. Huge disappointment! Around 10 years ago I gave up on VR and decided to wait for the VR game market to grow. It was a huge bummer to learn that nothing has changed after all this time. I…

Eleven Table Tennis VR -- very realistic table tennis

Golf+ -- fairly realistic Golf and also TopGolf setup.

Demeo -- like a really casual HeroQuest that you can jump into at any time (multiplayer, automatic).

Ancient Dungeon -- procedurally generated roguelike.

The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners -- really good zombie game

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#252

Post by tootie »

dougmwne wrote: post #21

I assume that Meta is done subsidizing the sales of the Quest. They have likely sold about 10 million units at a loss. I wonder if they have decided that the Quest is not yet the feature complete product that will run whatever they want the metaverse to be. Quest was basically an experiment and it seems they have learned what they need to. Their next headset, the Quest Pro, will have eye and face tracking cameras wit…

We bought one in the pandemic frenzy and played with it a ton. Family of four and we all found something fun. We fought over turns playing it for a few months, but now it spends most of its time on the cradle. It's still mostly a gimmick with barely a handful of interesting experiences. The Quest 2 is inexpensive, self-contained, has decent power and battery life with good hand tracking. There's not a lot of major technical barriers left to overcome. There just aren't enough clever ideas to make it worth strapping to my head.

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#253

Post by rblatz »

dougmwne wrote: post #210
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this cutting off your nose to spite your face?

I think not really. Quest 2 is not feature complete because it lacks core social features like color passthrough cameras, eye tracking and facial expression tracking. I’m guessing Meta thinks those features are so critical to their Metaverse experience that they are willing to forgo sales in the short term.

I just read a thread from 2021 on reddit yesterday where an Oculus employee said that they wouldn't be adding color passthrough cameras, and that the current cameras worked on ir and likely would for a while. I'll see if I can dig it up, but it seems like color passthrough isn't going to be on the menu for the 3.

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#254

Post by jedberg »

kranke155 wrote: post #87
andybak wrote: post #84

I would like to declare a new internet law: "VR will have become mainstream when someone posts a VR-related link to HN and the resultant discussion is about the article itself rather than VR in general"

VR will never become mainstream. I’ve been working in VR since 2015 and I don’t use it daily. I don’t know a single person who uses it daily. Maybe if you’re mildly autistic or remarkably introspective it works for you. For most people it’s a fundamentally alienating experience, like taking LSD but with none of the joy. VR is fundamentally an industrial technology, good for training and other purposes. For entertainm…

> I don’t know a single person who uses it daily.

I know a bunch of people who use it daily. They are all using Immersed[0] for work (disclosure, I'm an investor, but I invested because of the love their early customers had for the platform). Basically, you get a bunch of virtual monitors in VR.

It's way cheaper and much more portable than dragging five massive screens around, and the isolation is the point -- you can focus better when you have the headset on and headphones in.

But you're right, that is a niche, and not the social product Meta is hoping for.

[0] https://immersed.com

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#255

Post by ilaksh »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #10

I'm shocked that there aren't more multiplayer VR experiences. Yes, sure, there's Pavlov and VR Chat. But unless you have a friend who's into VR Chat, it's remarkably difficult to find a game that can immerse two different people at the same time. It felt a bit ironic that mini golf was one of the most fun multiplayer party games. My wife was like "You should bring over your quest 2!" to our new house -- she already…

Eleven Table Tennis, Golf+, Demeo

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#256

Post by jokowueu »

johndough wrote: post #231
nickthegreek wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quest 2 does not have an inward facing camera pointing at your iris.

The quest 3 might have eye tracking and face tracking. "One of the things I’m really excited about for future versions is getting eye tracking and face tracking in" - Mark Zuckerberg https://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-quest-3-4-eye-face-tracking/ Here is their tech demo for full eye and face tracking for virtual avatars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86-tHA8F-zU

What does that have to do with the quest 2 ?

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#257

Post by ilaksh »

trixie_ wrote: post #7

It's a strange move given Facebook changed their name to promote VR and the Quest is their flagship device. Also surprised that after mass producing this device for almost 2 years their manufacturing and supply chain costs aren't dialed in enough to maintain the current price. The message here is that VR is 'failing'. I hope it's not, but that's the message with this backwards move.

It doesn't mean VR is failing. It's because the entire global economy is in a massive downturn hurting profits of all companies and Meta decided they should not subsidize the headset cost anymore.

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#258

Post by ChildOfChaos »

I still have a quest 1.

I use it daily for fitness. I really love it, it's changed my life, and the exercise I get from it really makes me feel good, particularly someone that spends most of my weeks inside and working at a computer.

I've not enjoyed any other form of exercise but I really love this when combined with some of the fitness options such as FitXR.

It's a real shame this has gone up so much, wow it's a large increase, not even a small one, however this was the price of the Quest 1, the Quest 2 featured a price drop due to some cutbacks they made with the hardware, but it's still disappointing to see them do this, particularly with it being such a large raise in price.

I'm hoping my headset holds out until the Q3 or perhaps other options start coming on the market, perhaps from Apple. I don't care about VR gaming without a fitness element at the moment, as the games are a bit boring / not so fun for me, but for fitness it has been great.

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#259

Post by ilaksh »

colinmhayes wrote: post #91
trixie_ wrote: post #7

It's a strange move given Facebook changed their name to promote VR and the Quest is their flagship device. Also surprised that after mass producing this device for almost 2 years their manufacturing and supply chain costs aren't dialed in enough to maintain the current price. The message here is that VR is 'failing'. I hope it's not, but that's the message with this backwards move.

I suspect the quest 3 is more expensive to produce than the 2 so they’re raising prices now so that they can price the 3 the same as the 2 on launch. They may also want people to wait for the 3 because they feel it’ll do a better job of showcasing vr potential.

I heard the Quest 3 or Quest Pro will be almost twice as much as Quest 2.

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#260

Post by duffyjp »

pathartl wrote: post #20
roody15 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol exactly. Really wanted to play Half Life / Alex but not about to give Meta any money … absolutely not going to use a facebook account to use a VR device.

Alyx is probably one of the greatest gaming experiences I've had... but I was also able to borrow a Vive from a friend to play it. I'm a Half-Life nut so I would have bought a headset anyway, but I'm glad I haven't bought a Quest.

How much do you have to move around to play Alyx? I have an old Oculus Rift gathering dust, but my gaming PC is in a super cramped room.
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