Meta's Quest3 Sales Breakthrough, Future Expectations and Possible Alternatives

TapTechNews, June 27th. The sales of Meta's latest mixed reality headset, Quest3, seem to have broken through the one-million unit mark. This data is inferred based on the number of people who have completed Quest3's pre-installed game 'First Encounters'. Since 'First Encounters' is part of the initialization setup process for Quest3 and cannot be run on previous Quest devices, the number of people who have completed this game can roughly reflect the sales volume of Quest3.

'First Encounters' will start automatically after the player has set up Quest3. Utilizing Quest3's spatial scanning function, 'First Encounters' will simulate a spaceship crashing through the player's ceiling and scattering on the floor or table in the room. Players need to击退 invading monsters by shooting, and the final score will be uploaded to Quest's leaderboard system.

The software developer DavenBigelow has been tracking the data of the 'First Encounters' leaderboard. The number of 'participants' on the leaderboard represents the number of people who have completed the initial experience, and currently, this number has exceeded one million.

It should be noted that this number may not be completely accurate because users can choose to skip the 'First Encounters' link or exit the experience at any time. At the same time, it is also not clear whether users with private profiles are counted. If not, then the actual sales of Quest3 may far exceed one million units.

According to Meta's internal roadmap leaked to TheVerge last March, Mark Rabkin, vice president of Meta's VR division, said the company had sold nearly 20 million Quest headsets. Three months later, another leaked internal meeting showed that Zuckerberg told employees that 'the Quest series has sold tens of millions of units.' And in July 2021, Meta's chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, said that the sales of Quest2 had exceeded the sum of all previous generations, meaning that as of last summer, the vast majority of these 20 million Quest headsets were Quest2.

Compared to this, as of eight months ago, the current sales of Quest3 have only exceeded one million units, far inferior to the sales accumulated by Quest2 in three years. However, this gap is also expected.

The price of Quest2 is $100 cheaper than the previous generation product, and the previous generation product was immediately discontinued after the release of Quest2. While Quest3 is $200 more expensive than Quest2, and Quest2 is still sold at a lower price. Since March this year, the price of Quest2 has been reduced to $200, while Quest3 remains at $500. The sales data on the Amazon platform also shows that Quest2 is still more popular than Quest3. Some VR developers told UploadVR that most of their new users are still using Quest2.

However, Meta seems to have意识到 the price issue and is formulating a response strategy. In the past 16 months, there has been a large amount of evidence suggesting that Meta is preparing to launch a cheaper alternative to replace Quest2.

In the roadmap leaked in March this year, this cheap headset was mentioned. At the end of last month, the official store also listed the product information of 'Meta Quest3S', and this name had previously appeared in th e document of the suspected leaked headset design. At the beginning of this month, the video released by Meta's chief technology officer also accidentally exposed the suspected new headset device.

If the rumors are true and can keep the Snapdragon XR2 Gen2 chip and the mixed reality feature while controlling the price of Quest3S to around $300 (TapTechNews note: currently about 2186 yuan), then the sales of this headset may far exceed Quest3, thereby expanding the mixed reality market and providing developers with a more powerful development platform than Quest2.