Meta is giving away Quest Pro headsets, and that says it all
Meta cleans out the warehouses: With Quest Pro sitting untouched on the shelves, many headsets have been given away to Roblox developers.
Attendees of the Roblox developer conference RDC 2023 received a free Meta Quest Pro over the weekend. An announcement circulating on Reddit and Twitter says:
"Meta Quest Giveaway
The news is out! We want to give a special thanks to our partner Meta. They have offered to provide all RDC23 attendees with Meta Quest Pro headsets to help you create the best Roblox experiences for VR."
RDC 2023 was held on September 8 and 9. It is not known how many people attended the developer conference, but there were enough to fill a conference hall, as a video from the keynote shows.
As a reminder, Quest Pro was worth a whopping $1,500 when it launched in October 2022!
The steep fall of the Meta Quest Pro
Meta's first premium headset received mixed reviews from the press, with many criticizing the high price tag.
Hoping to boost sales, Meta cut the price to $1,000 in early March. According to a report, Meta informed its suppliers at the beginning of the year that it would not order new components for the Quest Pro. That means that production will end as soon as the components are run out.
This month, Quest Pro appeared for the first time in the Steam Hardware & Software Survey, representing only 0.39 percent of all connected PC VR headsets. One of the main reasons for the poor sales is that Meta Quest 3 is coming out in the next few weeks, and costs half as much as Quest Pro, but is technically superior in many ways.
The fact that Meta is now clearing out warehouses and giving away headsets en masse is the latest low point for a product that never quite fit the market.
Roblox will soon launch on the Meta Quest Store
With Quest Pro not selling well, it's a smart move for Meta to give the headset away to Roblox developers. At the end of July, a beta version of Roblox for Meta Quest was released on App Lab and was downloaded a million times within five days.
Roblox has around 65 million daily users and, like Meta Quest, is particularly popular with children and younger teenagers. The platform could become a growth driver for Meta Quest if developers optimize their games for the VR headset.
During the keynote, Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki announced that Roblox will launch for everyone in the Meta Quest Store later this month. This would coincide with the full reveal of Meta Quest 3 at Meta Connect 2023, which takes place September 27-28.
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