After Fewer Than Four Years, Meta Discontinues Support For The Original Quest Headset

In an email delivered this week to a large number of Quest customers, the company said that the original Oculus Quest will stop receiving new feature upgrades and would no longer have access to its current social VR features. Owners of the Quest headset will continue to be able to use the gadget and all of the apps, but they won't be able to "make or join a party," according to the email. Also Read: New Headset Meta Quest Pro To Cost $1,500 On March 5, the business announced that users will no longer have access to Horizon Home's services. Additionally, the business states that while it will no longer be "delivering new features" to Quest 1 players, it will still be "continuing to provide important bug fixes and security patches until 2024." The Quest was the first wireless headset with complete six-degree-of-freedom head- and hand-tracking released by Meta (formerly Oculus) less than four years ago at its initial debut. In late 2020, the $300 Quest 2 took the place of the $400 Quest that had originally debuted. Despite a $100 price hike the previous year, The Quest 2 apparently sold millions of units. Since the Quest 2's Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chipset outperforms the first Quest's inferior Snapdragon 835 in terms of sales, more VR game developers are focusing on this platform. Support for the Quest 2 and the recently released $1,500 Quest Pro won't be impacted by Meta's declaration at this time. Photo Credit: CNET Less than a month after former Meta CTO John Carmack announced his resignation from the firm, which he claimed was "working at half the effectiveness that would make me happy," the initial Quest sunset announcement was made. Carmack supported the Oculus Go, the Quest inside Meta's untethered forerunner, and was a big supporter of the original Quest within Meta, which he unlocked in 2021 through a post-discontinuation update. Carmack cautioned developers not to create sophisticated applications for the Quest Pro before "crunching it down" for the Quest 2, which has less processing capacity, in a keynote lecture in October. The low-end system will house all of your actual clients, he cautioned.