Meta significantly cut the prices of official Quest 2 accessories.
The new Quest 2 official accessory pricing is:
- Elite Strap: $25 (originally $60)
- Elite Strap with Battery: $45 (originally $120)
- Carrying Case: $20 (originally $60)
- Active Pack: $30 (originally $70)
- Fit Pack: $20 (originally $50)
These represent significant discounts of more than 50% compared to the original pricing. The price of these accessories had already been cut, though far less drastically, from January 1 this year.
David Heaney
This new accessory pricing is being announced less than a month after the company cut the headset itself to just $200, it's lowest price ever, and two months after 256GB model went out of stock across the Meta Store and retailers. It remains unavailable.
This Is A Clearance Sale
Meta's continued cuts to Quest 2's headset and accessory pricing, alongside the disappearance of the 256GB model, strongly suggest the headset is nearing the end of its time on the market.
David Heaney
As it stands, if Quest 2 was off the market the entry price for Meta's VR platform would become $500, the 128GB model of Quest 3. But there's strong evidence that Meta plans to introduce a cheaper headset to directly replace Quest 2, a headset rumored to be called "Quest 3 Lite" or "Quest 3S".
A Meta hardware roadmap meeting leaked to The Verge in March last year revealed the company planned to release a new headset after Quest 3 in 2024 "at the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market".
Reports from The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and a Chinese analyst who has been reliable in the past suggest this headset will feature the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset from Quest 3 but use the old fresnel lenses from Quest 2 to hit a low enough price to replace it. That's why we no longer recommend buying Quest 2.
XR2 Gen 2 has a more than twice as powerful GPU, which some developers are already using to deliver much better graphics.
It seems likely that Quest 2 headset and accessory price cuts are in fact clearance sales, and have already successfully cleared stock of the 256GB model. But how long will it take for the 128GB stock and official accessories to deplete too, and will the cheaper alternative to Quest 3 soon follow?
