Meta announced today that they are changing the pricing on their wildly successful and affordable Quest 2 headset. Starting in august so in less than a week the 128 gig quest 2 will go from 299 to 399 and the 256 gig will be 499 instead of 399. But don’t worry for a limited time from August 1st to December 31st 2022  you’ll get beat saber for free, that is if you buy the quest 2 brand new, the beat saber deal is not available for renewed headsets which oh yea those are going to be getting a price hike along with first party quest  accessories. Meta didn’t specify but from the current pricing of the refurb headsets they will more than likely be 350 and 450 respectively for the 2 models. Basically beat saber now costs $100 rather than $30 when you buy a new quest 2 I guess?

We all have known that oculus now meta have been selling these headsets at a loss so maybe this was a forgone conclusion but I assumed a price increase would have come for the next product in the quest lineup aka the quest 3. Not a product that has been out for nearly 2 years. And as a gamer being used to seeing xbox and playstation put out a redesign mid life cycle for less than the launch prices makes this feel a bit unfair. This does make me think project cambria is definitely going to be expensive and probably over the $1,000 dollar mark like we’ve seen reported.

Meta justifies the price increase by stating that the costs to make and ship our products have been on the rise. By adjusting the price of Quest 2, we can continue to grow our investment in groundbreaking research and new product development that pushes the VR industry to new heights.

We have an ambitious VR hardware roadmap, beginning with the launch of our high-end headset, Project Cambria, later this year. And we plan to ship new generations of Meta Quest after that. 

Even with these pricing changes, Meta Quest 2 continues to be the most affordable VR headset with a comparable feature set on the market. And each headset keeps getting better after you buy. From hand tracking improvements and Air Link to Meta Horizon Home, we’re constantly adding new features to make VR more social, intuitive, and immersive than ever before. We’ll continue shipping exciting new software updates to improve our products on a regular basis.

Now’s the right time for us to double down on our efforts to push the state of the art forward. We’ll continue working alongside the developers, early adopters, and die-hard fans who play and build for VR every day, and we can’t wait to keep sharing the work we’re doing at Reality Labs on the road to the metaverse.

These changes coming out right before the move from no longer requiring a facebook account to use the quest seems like a concerted effort but I guess it is what it is. If you are watching this now and want a quest I would go ahead and get it now before august 1st when the price increase goes live. 

You know whose prices aren’t increasing though? This video's sponsor.

Let me know in the comments how this makes you feel because for me I don't’ love it, but maybe I’m just being cynical.