Meta CTO says Quest Pro paved the way for Quest 3S
Meta Quest Pro was a stepping stone for later headsets such as Quest 3 and Quest 3S, says Meta's CTO.
Tech and business analyst Ben Thompson had a long and interesting chat with Meta's CTO and head of Reality Labs Andrew Bosworth. It covers a lot of ground: The development of Meta Quest, competition from Apple Vision Pro, the Orion AR glasses prototype, and much more.
During the conversation, Thompson brings up the Quest Pro and asks Bosworth if it was a mistake. Here is Bosworth's response:
"So it’s funny, Mark and I have this debate all the time. Quest Pro, you probably can’t get to Quest 3 without Quest Pro. Quest Pro was the device that allowed us to pioneer the pancake lenses, it allowed us to pioneer eye tracking and face tracking, which we’ll use in the future, it pioneered all these pieces, and there’s this kind of saying in a hardware space, which is like the Gen Three is what you wish your Gen One was going to be, but there’s no way to short circuit it, there’s no way to jump ahead. You actually have to launch the Gen One to get to the Gen Three. There’s no shortcuts, and I really feel that way."
Bosworth admits that Quest Pro didn't sell as well as Meta had hoped, but it "did end up being the critical device for us getting to the 3S," he says.
You can listen to or read the full interview on Stratechery.
Meta Quest Pro: The verdict is not final
The Meta Quest Pro was launched in October 2022 and wasn't received well. Meta reduced the price from $1,500 to $1,000 after a few months and even gave away units to developers a year after launch.
The reasons for the Quest Pro's failure are manifold: it was too expensive for what if offered, had an outdated chipset, no dedicated software, poor passthrough. However, the Quest Pro did bring some important innovations, such as the pancake lenses that live on in Quest 3 and the self-tracking Quest Touch Pro controllers.
Last week, Meta announced that the Quest Pro will be discontinued by the end of the year, and a potential successor due out in 2027 has been scrapped in favor of another product prototype.
Bosworth's answer comes as no surprise. What can the head of Reality Labs say other than that Quest Pro has somehow been a good investment for Meta? Then again, he's not wrong.
While most industry analysts today are rightly wondering why Meta would have released a device like the Quest Pro in the first place, they may look more favorably on the device in ten years when its role and importance as a stepping stone in Meta's continued hardware development becomes more apparent.
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