Meta Quest headsets fall victim to the ongoing pricing crisis

Along with smartphones, laptops, and pretty much every device on the market, the Meta Quest 3 and the Meta Quest 3S have now also fallen victim to the ongoing pricing crisis. Both VR headsets are getting a price hike, effective immediately, which is a real blow for newcomers to XR (Extended Reality).

Meta’s VR headsets dominate the industry

The Quest headsets are the most popular VR headsets across the XR industry. A big reason for their popularity is the fact that they deliver powerful hardware at very reasonable prices.

It has often been reported that Meta barely makes a profit on the Quest headsets. This has all been part of the company’s plan to secure unchallengeable dominance across the VR market, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes that it is the future of computing.

Today’s AI boom and the subsequent rush to prop up data centers everywhere has sent the costs for memory modules skyrocketing. This, in turn, has led to everything becoming more expensive, including Meta’s headsets.

Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3S price hikes

The Meta Quest 3 and the Quest 3S are seeing a price hike. Meta has raised the price of the Quest 3 by $100 and the Quest 3S by $50. The Quest 3 now starts at $599, and the Quest 3S, which is the budget offering, now starts at $349.

This is a direct result of rising memory prices and the shortage of said memory due to high demand from AI data centers.

Other products might follow suit

For now, Meta has not announced price hikes for its other products for the XR market. The Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, for example, still cost the same as before for the time being.

It’s highly likely that these products will follow suit very soon, however. Every company that has tried to resist raising prices has been unable to do so and Meta has already taken the first step.

These price hikes will likely come as a blow to Meta, though, because its headsets and smart glasses are extremely popular in multiple regions around the world.

It was expected, really

This isn’t surprising at all. Like I mentioned before, pretty much every company is having to introduce price hikes. In fact, some smaller companies are not going to survive this period of uncertainty at all.

Meta’s Quest headsets are an excellent way to dip your toes into the XR world, so this is a big loss for the entire VR industry and I hope it can reverse soon. Stay away from Meta’s glasses, though.