Malcolm Owen
Meta isn't giving up on creating a potential rival to the Apple Vision Pro, with its CTO warning that reports of the Quest Pro 2's demise are greatly exaggerated.
A July 19 report about the development of displays for a future Meta headset included a detail that the social giant has stopped acquiring more components for the Quest Pro. The report also alleged that the Pro line of headsets has also been suspended, effectively killing the prospect of a Quest Pro 2.
In a now-expired response via Instagram Stories as spotted by Road to VR, Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth insists that there's a lot more to the story. Bosworth further implies that the claims of the ending of the Quest Pro 2 may have been sourced from an employee affected after a project was cut.
"I have to explain this every year. There is no Quest Pro 2 headset until we decide there is," explains Bosworth.
"What I mean by that is there are lots of prototype headsets - lots of them - all in development in parallel. Some of them, we say that's not the right one,' and we shut it down. Some of them, we say that's the right one,' and we spin it up."
He continues by saying that no headset gets the name until it goes out the door, before acting coy about its existence.
"There might be a Quest Pro 2, there might not be. I'm not really telling you, but I will say don't believe everything you read about what's been stopped or started," he declares. "A lot of times it comes from someone who's unhappy their particular project got cut when there are other projects that did not get cut."
Reporting from July 19 wrote that Meta's expectations for a new high-grade headset would involve an internal-only demonstration AR headset codenamed Orion, due in 2024. A public AR headset due in 2027 going by "Artemis" is apparently receiving cutbacks on components, such as a switch to glass instead of silicon carbide.
The change would apparently reduce the field of view of the headset to around 50 degrees for the glass version, rather than 70 degrees for silicon carbide-based editions. Meanwhile, main Quest Pro competitor Apple Vision Pro has a field of view of 120 degrees.
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Charles Martin
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WTF is this Facebook executive doing? His only response should be silence or “We don’t talk about future products.”
You know you're doomed when you have to play catch up to a product that isn't even out yet from a company that has never had a product in that category.
Meta may be able to carve out a decent low-end option like Android has for tablets, but they'll have to have some really special HW and SW working perfectly together to be the company people look to over Apple.
“I have to explain this every year.” — every year? How long has their “pro” device been out, and has anyone heard him comment on it before?
”There might be a Quest Pro 2, there might not be. I’m not really telling you,” — real professional response, huh?
This guy sounds frustrated, or incredibly embarrassed after seeing what Apple announced. This is someone who heads up the hardware at Meta, burning through tens of billions, had a head start on Apple by almost 10 years, and realizes that Apple will destroy their business. It will be a slow death — less hardware sales, fewer and fewer apps, more and more billions lost until Mark pulls the plug to appease shareholders. They will probably end up selling the hardware business to another company — the question is, who would buy it?
Stick a fork in them they’re done, just a matter of time…….