This week, the plans for an alternative product to Apple’s Vision Pro came to an end. As the usually well-informed US media outlet “The Information” reports, the end of the development of the “La Jolla” project was ordered at an internal meeting of Meta’s Reality Labs.
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Under this code name, Meta According to the report has been working on a high-end version of its Quest headsets for several years. The device was due to hit the market in 2027. Like Apple’s Vision Pro displays, La Jolla was supposed to have micro-OLEDs, which promised high image quality and resolution. There is no information on the reasons for the decision; “The Information” cites two unnamed Meta employees.
The most obvious explanation is that the company no longer sees great market potential for such a product. Apple’s Vision Pro is not a huge success either, with a price starting at $3,500, and the meta-competitor in the VR market is reportedly currently working on a cheaper version. A possible “Vision Pro 2” is only expected to appear after that.
So far no successor for Quest Pro
Meta, on the other hand, had already left the expensive headset business in mid-2023, and since then the Quest Pro, which was last offered for $1,000, has no longer been manufactured. According to reports at the time, development on a successor, which would not be the Micro-OLED version, has also been discontinued.
This means that for the foreseeable future, the only offers from Meta will be the Quest 2 starting at around 200 US dollars and the Quest 3 starting at 500 US dollars. However, the Quest 2 is hardly available anymore; in Germany, the Quest 3 with 128 or 512 GB is mainly readily available. The price difference of 150 euros compared to the top model for around 700 euros makes the smaller versions unattractive.
The headsets, formerly known as Oculus, are increasingly becoming a billion-dollar grave for Meta. Every year, the company invests large amounts in its Reality Labs. In the first quarter of 2024 alone, the loss was 3.8 billion US dollars, and in the more than ten years of the department’s existence, it was over 50 billion. It was only in June 2024 that Meta split the labs into two new working groups and made layoffs. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg stuck to his VR strategy fairly steadfastly even after the release of the Vision Pro.
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