Meta Platforms Inc. will stop selling its Quest virtual reality headsets to business customers and discontinue a variety of software services that run on the devices.
The corporate announced the move on Thursday. The choice shouldn’t be unexpected: Earlier this week, Meta laid off greater than 1,000 staffers from the Reality Labs business unit that develops its VR devices. Most of the affected employees were reportedly a part of hardware engineering teams.
The primary VR service that Meta will shut down is known as Horizon Workrooms. Introduced in 2021, it provides a virtual conference room that may be accessed using the Facebook parent’s VR headsets. Virtual avatars of as much as 16 employees can collaborate on content equivalent to presentations.
Horizon Workrooms will go offline on Feb. 16. 4 days later, Meta will stop shipping its Quest family of VR headsets to businesses.
The corporate’s flagship Quest 3 headset made its debut in 2023. It’s powered by a VR-optimized chip from Qualcomm Technologies Inc. that features a central processing unit, a graphics processing unit and a man-made intelligence accelerator. The processor supports embedded displays with a resolution of two,064 pixels by 2,208 pixels per eye.
Meta offers the Quest 3 alongside a more recent, less advanced VR headset called the Quest 3S that launched in 2024. The latter device includes the identical Qualcomm chip as its predecessor but provides a lower display resolution. It costs $200 lower than the Quest 3.
At the side of 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 administer their corporations’ Quest devices.
HMS makes it possible to configure which staffer can access what VR applications. Those access rules are attached to worker profiles. When an worker logs right into a Quest that can also be utilized by other team members, the headset prompts the relevant profile’s access rules.
HMS also provides various other management features. Administrators can reset worker passwords, remotely delete the information on a Quest headset and add integrations with third-party device management tools. Although Meta will stop selling HMS next month, it’ll proceed supporting the service through Jan. 4, 2030.
“We’re making this transformation as Meta increases our deal with constructing the world-class first-party consumer hardware and software needed to advance the virtual reality market,” Meta staffers wrote within the blog post that announced the move. “We remain committed to VR for the long run, and can proceed to speculate 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 corporate is considering doubling its eyewear production capability to twenty million units per yr. Meta’s newest pair of smart glasses, the Meta Ray-Ban Display, features a built-in AI assistant and a wristband that enable users to manage the device with hand gestures.
Image: Meta
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