Oh, Quest. You’re so often the one that comes to mind when a person mentions virtual reality. And yet your dream of capturing the affordable VR market—as HTC and Apple have taken ownership of the premium VR space—just doesn’t seem to be matching up with actual reality.
Reports of Meta’s Q4 2024 performance are trickling in from analysts, and while we don’t have data on Quest 3S sales figures directly, tech analyst firm Omdia says the Quest 3S has failed to boost VR sales through the end of the year, as Meta surely hoped.
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When Meta introduced the Quest 3 in late 2023 as a follow-up to its successful Quest 2, the price hike took damn near everybody by surprise. The Quest 2 released in two flavors: 64GB for $299 and 256GB for $399. Then the Quest 3 came out in 128GB and 512GB versions for $500 and $650, respectively. Our eyes collectively bugged out.
The Quest 3S released in October of 2024 at $300 for the entry-level 128GB version, bringing a $300 headset back to Meta’s shelves. Its screen and optics are the same as the Quest 2’s, but the second-generation Snapdragon XR2 processor packs 8GB of RAM compared to the Quest 2’s 6GB for snappier performance. It also manages to be about 20% slimmer. A win, right?
Not so fast, says Omdia analyst George Jijiashvili over at Game Developer. By comparing downloads of the Meta Quest app, which is used by all Quest headsets, it shows that the Quest 3S’ release last October failed to move the needle.
After the Meta Quest app saw 10.3 million downloads in 2022, the total number of downloads for 2024 closed at 7.8 million, a slight increase over 2023 (when the Quest 3 came out), but still far lower than 2022. Downloads of the app, as measured on Christmas day, were 27% lower in 2024 than 2023.
Amazon sales data also shows weak performance compared to 2023. “According to data from Amazon product pages, over 160,000 Quest headsets were sold in November 2024 across eight countries – down by 16% compared to 2023,” wrote George.
“The Quest 3S accounted for 66% of sales, with the Quest 3 making up the remainder. November typically marks the peak VR sales due to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, during which Meta offered substantial discounts on both Quest 3 and Quest 3S models in all markets.”
The Amazon page data only tracks U.S. sales, but as George writes, Amazon’s U.S. site represents 73% of its global sales, making it an accurate-enough representation. The Quest 3S had a short sales year, and even though 2024 may have been disappointing, perhaps it’ll be able to manifest a better reality in 2025.