According to emails sent to many Quests, the original Oculus Quest will stop receiving new feature updates and will lose access to the company’s existing social VR features. user this week.
Quest headset owners will still be able to use the device and all available apps, but will no longer be able to “create or join parties,” according to Meta’s Horizon Home feature. access will also be cut on March 5, the company wrote. Meta will no longer “offer new features” to Quest 1 users, but will continue to provide “critical bug fixes and security patches through 2024,” the company said.
The announcement comes less than four years after the Quest first launched as Meta’s (then Oculus) first wireless headset, bringing full 6 degrees of freedom head and hand tracking. The first version of the Quest, which launched at $400, was replaced by the $300 Quest 2 in late 2020.
The Quest 2 reportedly sold tens of millions of units last year despite a $100 price hike. Rather, it means that gaming is increasingly targeting the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chipset in the Quest 2. Meta’s announcement also means Quest 2 support at this point, as well as the recent $1,500 Quest Pro release.
The original Quest demise announcement came less than a month after former Meta CTO John Carmack announced he was leaving the company. Carmack was a major proponent of the original Quest within Meta and a booster for his untethered predecessor Oculus Go, unlocked by the 2021 post-discontinuation update.
In his October keynote, Carmack warned that developers shouldn’t design a high-end app for the Quest Pro and then “crush it” for the underperforming Quest 2. is,” he warned.
