Meta to stop selling Quest headsets to businesses, discontinue multiple VR features – News

Meta Platforms Inc. will stop selling its Quest virtual reality headsets to business customers and discontinue a number of software services that run on the devices.

The company announced the move on Thursday. The decision is not unexpected: Earlier this week, Meta laid off more than 1,000 staffers from the Reality Labs business unit that develops its VR devices. Many of the affected employees were reportedly part of hardware engineering teams.

The first VR service that Meta will shut down is called Horizon Workrooms. Introduced in 2021, it provides a virtual conference room that can be accessed using the Facebook parent’s VR headsets. Virtual avatars of up to 16 employees can collaborate on content such as presentations.

Horizon Workrooms will go offline on Feb. 16. Four days later, Meta will stop shipping its Quest family of VR headsets to businesses.

The company’s flagship Quest 3 headset made its debut in 2023. It’s powered by a VR-optimized chip from Qualcomm Technologies Inc. that includes a central processing unit, a graphics processing unit and an artificial intelligence accelerator. The processor supports embedded displays with a resolution of 2,064 pixels by 2,208 pixels per eye.

Meta offers the Quest 3 alongside a newer, less advanced VR headset called the Quest 3S that launched in 2024. The latter device includes the same Qualcomm chip as its predecessor but provides a lower display resolution. It costs $200 less than the Quest 3.

In conjunction with the discontinuation of Quest shipments to businesses, Meta will stop selling a software subscription called Horizon managed services, or HMS. The offering provides tools that administrators can use to manage their companies’ Quest devices.

HMS makes it possible to configure which staffer can access what VR applications. Those access rules are attached to employee profiles. When an employee logs into a Quest that is also used by other team members, the headset activates the relevant profile’s access rules.

HMS also provides various other management features. Administrators can reset employee passwords, remotely delete the data on a Quest headset and add integrations with third-party device management tools. Although Meta will stop selling HMS next month, it will continue supporting the service through Jan. 4, 2030.

“We’re making this change as Meta increases our focus on building the world-class first-party consumer hardware and software needed to advance the virtual reality market,” Meta staffers wrote in the blog post that announced the move. “We remain committed to VR for the long term, and will continue to invest in growing and evolving the category.”

The Reality Labs unit that develops the Quest series now focuses mainly on Meta’s growing lineup of smart glasses. On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that the company is considering doubling its eyewear production capacity to 20 million units per year. Meta’s newest pair of smart glasses, the Meta Ray-Ban Display, includes a built-in AI assistant and a wristband that enable users to control the device with hand gestures.

Image: Meta