Quest 2 Price Jumps To $399 As Meta Costs Rise
The price for a new Quest 2 is jumping to $399 as Meta says “the costs to make and ship our products have been on the rise.”
Oculus Quest 2 debuted at $299 in 2020, $100 cheaper than Oculus Quest from 2019. In 2021, Facebook bumped the base Quest 2 headset’s storage from 64GB to 128GB while holding the suggested entry price firm at $299. Earlier this year, Meta changed the headset’s branding on the physical device to its new corporate identity — officially becoming Meta Quest 2.
The price change will kick in officially on August 1, with the 128GB model increasing to $399 and the 256GB model increasing to $499.
Now With Free Beat Saber
To offset the price difference, Meta says it’s now bundling Beat Saber free with the purchase of Meta Quest 2 between August 1 and December 31 of 2022. Beat Saber is one of VR’s most popular and comfortable titles and since Facebook acquired developer Beat Games in late 2019 it has seen major new features launch as well as a slew of content packs from big name musicians.
Refurbished Quest 2 Price Increasing Too
Meta confirmed to UploadVR that refurbished Quest 2 prices will increase to $349 and $429 for 128GB and 256GB models respectively. The Beat Saber promotion does not apply to refurbished headsets. In the past, some retailers have discounted Quest headsets around Black Friday, but demand around the holidays has also outstripped supply such that Quest has been backordered for months.
Previously, refurbished Quest systems have been as low as $249 or even $199, depending on the model.
Next Moves
Quest 2 doesn’t support expandable storage, so what you buy is what you get, and titles for the headset like Resident Evil 4, Medal Of Honor, and Myst have started to take up dozens of gigabytes each. Upcoming games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas promise to continue to eat up more of the internal storage on Quest 2 headsets.
“Meta has invested billions of dollars to help foster and grow a thriving VR ecosystem. We’re adjusting the price of our Meta Quest 2 headsets to enable us to continue investing in ways that will keep driving this increasingly competitive industry forward for consumers and developers alike,” a Meta spokesperson wrote in a prepared statement.
Even as Meta prepares a high-end professional-grade standalone headset to complement Quest 2 – currently known as Project Cambria – competitors like Pico may be preparing new competition. Standalone VR headsets Pico 4 and Pico 4 Pro, for example, were just spotted in FCC filings.
Nonetheless, Meta remains confident its pricing will be hard to match.
“Even with these pricing changes, Meta Quest 2 continues to be the most affordable VR headset with a comparable feature set on the market,” Meta claimed in its blog post announcing the new price structure.
