Looks like Meta and Tencent won’t be making a budget-friendly VR headset after all

It’s a bit difficult to say that the Pico 4 is among the best VR headsets, when we’ve got a powerhouse like the Quest 3 on the market. But what do these headsets even have in common? Well, possibly: more than you’d think.

One of the stories that made a lot of buzz in 2023 was about ByteDance’s decision to downsize Pico — and that’s saying it lightly — and move away from consumer-grade headset production. The exact reason for that decision is not entirely clear to this day.

As if that wasn’t dramatic enough on its own, at almost the same time, Meta and Tencent announced that they would be joining forces in order to create an internationally available, budget-friendly Meta Quest headset.

But — wah-wah — seems like that won’t be happening after all (translated source).


The gist of this is that there were allegedly a lot of conflicts and disagreements between Meta and Tencent, due to which Meta made the decision to put things on hold indefinitely. And that sort of makes sense.

I mean, Tencent has a pretty significant influence in China. Which just so happens to be the same place where Meta’s biggest products: Facebook, Instagram and Threads, are banned. And those kind of illustrate Zuckerberg’s entire philosophy when it comes to creating an ecosystem.

Part of which, of course, is the Meta Quest series of headsets and their respective apps.

So if Zuck wouldn’t budge on how this theoretical cheaper headset was being made, the decision starts to make sense. It’s not like Meta is losing anything out of it either: the Quest 2 is playing the role of a VR starter pack just fine in the west, and it isn’t showing any signs of becoming outdated in 2024.

And, let’s be honest, what would a “Quest 3 lite” be other than a slightly more powerful Quest 2 with a bigger resolution or… A Quest 3 that has lost a lot of what makes it impressive to begin with?

Well, now we may never find out. But hey: this report is basically just a rumor for now. Who knows? We may get to see this budget-friendly Quest headset by the end of 2024 after all. And nothing is stopping Meta from making that happen without Tencent's help.