Meta is working on a Quest Pro successor again, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports, after reportedly canceling two candidates in recent years.
In his latest report, in which he also said that Apple is still working on microLED displays for AR glasses, Gurman writes: "Meta is working on Quest 4 VR goggles, as well as a new high-end model that could eventually become a successor to the Quest Pro".
Meta executives have repeatedly mentioned working on "the next Quest", and last year The Information reported that Quest 4 is arriving in 2026 as two models, a budget model and a premium model, codenamed Pismo Low and Pismo High. But the reference to a new Quest Pro is puzzling.
David Heaney
The Information's report also mentioned a new Quest Pro, arriving in 2027 and codenamed La Jolla, which itself had been spun up after the cancelation of the original Quest Pro 2 project, a headset that was set for 2024 and codenamed Funston.
But just one month after that report, The Information reported that La Jolla too had been canceled, in favor of a different 2027 headset codenamed Puffin, an ultralight design with a tethered compute puck. Then, in October, The Verge's Alex Heath said that during a discussion with Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth, the executive confirmed these two reported decisions and explained Meta's approach to developing new hardware, including citing the "tepid reaction" to the original Quest Pro as the reasoning for canceling La Jolla.
How Does Meta Develop & Cancel Hardware?
According to The Verge's Alex Heath, Bosworth cited the "tepid reaction" to the original Quest Pro as the reasoning for canceling La Jolla. But arguably more interestingly, Bosworth detailed the stages of Meta's hardware development cycle:
- Pre-Discovery: a dedicated team is always "prototyping the craziest stuff", creating a "proof of experience" for each idea.
- Discovery: a "small number" of Pre-Discovery concepts are approved by executive review to proceed to the Discovery phase, where "a few" employees examine the practicalities of industrial design and cost.
- Prototyping: if deemed practical, Discovery concepts are prototyped, involving "maybe 10 times more people", who build integrated hardware and software to bring the concept to life.
- Engineering Validation Test: "roughly half" of those prototypes go to this final stage, where they are put on the product roadmap. Of these EVTs, Meta executives apparently kill “about half” before they ship, while the others release to the public.
Heath says Bosworth told him the ultralight headset with a puck, codenamed Puffin, was moved from Pre-Discovery to Discovery. That means it could still be killed off in Prototyping or the EVT phase.
This makes Gurman's new reference to "a new high-end model that could eventually become a successor to the Quest Pro" all the more confusing. Is Gurman referring to Puffin, or to yet another new Quest Pro successor project, separate to either La Jolla or Puffin? It's entirely unclear, but keep reading UploadVR as we'll bring you news of any future mention of a Quest Pro 2 from reliable sources.
