Beginning the yr, Meta introduced the discontinuation of its Meta Quest Professional MR headset, following a blended bag of success for the enterprise-facing head-mounted gadget.
Meta not too long ago introduced through the gadget’s touchdown web page that the Quest Professional is “now not out there.” Meta has not defined why the gadget is discontinued; nevertheless, audiences can assume the transfer pertains to the headset’s lacklustre efficiency in its chosen office market and the comparatively latest launch of the cheaper Quest 3S MR headset, each of which can have contributed to the transfer.
The Meta Quest Professional first launched following its announcement at Join 2022, with the MR gadget coming approach earlier than the Meta Quest 3/3S. The Meta Quest Professional got here at a excessive value level, costing roughly £469.99 on the time of its discontinuation, a steep value for a lot of.
Whereas its MR integrations, together with color passthrough, eye, and hand monitoring, had been pretty ground-breaking and forward of the pack upon launch, the gadget is considerably outmatched by the much more accessible 3/3S collection of MR headsets, debatably making the Quest Professional considerably redundant.
However regardless of the Quest Professional’s rocky journey, the gadget needs to be recognised as a vital stepping stone for Meta. For the reason that 2022 announcement, Meta has dedicated to MR and AR gadgets, broadening the corporate’s product portfolio enormously by transferring away from solely VR companies and in direction of MR headsets, AR sensible glasses, and past.
Meta’s MR Headset Roadmap
The Meta Quest 3S debuted on the agency’s yearly Join showcase occasion final yr. The product provides a lower-cost model of the Quest 3 MR gadget in a bid to extend adoption. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth within the earlier yr famous that MR is “on the coronary heart of what Meta is attempting to realize with Actuality Labs,” with the CTO explaining that the expertise holds “the best potential” for unlocking the metaverse, “the possibility to create probably the most social platform ever” Bosworth remarked.
In response to Bosworth, in 2024, two key parts got here collectively to construct the social MR focus: Horizon Worlds increasing and reaching cell customers and “next-generation Meta Avatars system[s].”
Meta is working to rebuild Meta Horizon after a gradual launch throughout the Metaverse hype wave. With an MR and broader device-ready technique within the works, “our imaginative and prescient for Horizon OS is to construct a brand new sort of general-purpose computing platform able to operating each sort of software program, supporting each sort of person, and open to each sort of creator and developer,” Bosworth added.
