Meta Says It’s Sold Nearly 20 Million Quest Headsets

(Credit: Adrià García Sarceda) Meta may have become the laughingstock of the internet over the last year, but there’s one domain in which it’s reportedly succeeding: Meta Quest. The company says it’s sold nearly 20 million Quest units, marking clear consumer interest in its virtual reality headset line.

Meta shared the statistic with employees on Tuesday during a roadmap presentation for its Reality Labs division, which handles the company’s VR and “metaverse” technologies. The presentation, which was shared with The Verge, detailed Meta’s plans for the Quest line in the future and boasted almost 20 million Quest headset sales to date.

In 2018 (when Meta was still called Facebook), the company introduced the Oculus Quest: a standalone VR headset developed by Oculus, which Facebook acquired in 2014. Meta released a second iteration of the technology, Meta Quest 2, in October 2020. Quest 2 offered a far more detailed screen resolution than its predecessor (1832 by 1920p versus 1440 by 1600p) and a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chipset, which allowed for a more responsive VR experience. The new headset cost $100 more, but it was a solid improvement from the 2018 edition—something Meta’s customers have clearly recognized.

Meta Quest Pro. (Credit: Meta)

A 2021 Quest 2 product recall related to skin irritation showed that “about 4 million” of the headsets had been shipped by that time. Other than that, however, we’ve had limited details surrounding Meta Quest’s commercial success. Now-CTO Andrew Bosworth vaguely mentioned around that time that Quest 2 had “outsold not just its predecessor, but all of its predecessors combined,” but he didn’t provide any numbers. Qualcomm’s CEO said later that year that Quest 2 was “at 10 million units,” but a Qualcomm spokesperson quickly walked that statement back, saying it was only an average of third-party estimates.

Now Meta’s VR headset numbers are a little less mysterious. So are Meta’s plans for Quest, which include the recently announced (and very pricey) Quest Pro and a Quest 3. The Quest 3, which is slated for release later this year, will reportedly contain twice the power and half the bulk of the Quest 2. It’ll also incorporate mixed reality experiences that use front-facing cameras to capture real-time video of the user’s surroundings. Meta vice president of VR Mark Rabkin told employees that the Quest 3 will be just a touch pricier than its predecessor but didn’t say exactly how much.

Sometime in 2024, Meta plans to release an accessibility-focused headset currently codenamed Ventura. This device, Rabkin said, will “pack the biggest punch…at the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market.”

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