Meta Sharpens the Axe for Quest 1: First-party Social Ends in March, Security Patches in 2024 - Road to VR

It seems Meta is yet taking the archetypal 2019 Quest down the shed this year, arsenic the institution announced it’s acceptable to deprecate first-party societal features connected the device, which includes entree to Parties and Meta Horizon Home. Meta besides announced it won’t beryllium delivering caller features beyond captious bug fixes and information patches until 2024.

The institution sent retired an email to users of the archetypal Quest detailing the upcoming changes. Here’s that email successful full:

We launched Quest 1 implicit 4 years agone and we are grateful to the Quest 1 assemblage for pushing VR forwards. As we look to the future, we stay committed to supporting the assemblage of Quest 1 users and volition proceed to enactment the headset with a fewer changes:

• You volition inactive beryllium capable to usage your Quest 1 headset and disposable apps.
• We won’t beryllium delivering caller features to Quest 1.
• We program to proceed maintaining the strategy bundle with captious bug fixes and information patches until 2024.
• Quest 1 users volition nary longer beryllium capable to make oregon articulation a party.
• Quest 1 users who presently person entree to Meta Horizon Home societal features volition suffer entree to these features connected 5 March 2023. You won’t beryllium capable to invite others to your Home oregon sojourn idiosyncratic else’s Home.

If you person immoderate questions astir these changes oregon astir your Quest 1 headset, we promote you to interaction Meta Store enactment here: https://store.facebook.com/help/support/

Thank you to the full Quest 1 assemblage for helping america get to wherever we are today.

Launched successful May 2019, the archetypal Quest wasn’t conscionable the company’s archetypal 6DOF standalone headset—it was a invaluable caller level that sparked an detonation successful contented revenue, making it the people level du jour for VR crippled developers. Many of the hits of contiguous beryllium their occurrence to having gained foothold connected the archetypal Quest.

Quest (left) comapred to Quest 2 (right) | Photo by Road to VR

A small implicit 1 twelvemonth later, Meta (ex-Facebook) released its successor, Quest 2, which substantively included higher solution displays (1,440 × 1,600 OLED vs 1,920 × 1,832 LCD) and a higher refresh complaint (72 Hz vs up to 120 Hz), some of which were driven by a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2—a important upgrade implicit the Quest 1’s Snapdragon 835.

Undoubtedly, Quest 2 has since cemented itself arsenic the go-to location for VR developers looking to maximize profit; 2 years aft its launch, Quest 2 contented has managed to make $1.5 cardinal successful revenue.

Although you’d deliberation societal relation deprecation and a wide extremity day to information patches  for Quest 1 should travel arsenic nary existent surprise; it’s aged and you’d beryllium hard-pressed to find it caller successful the container anywhere. Still, seven of the apical 10 best-rated games connected the Quest Store enactment the archetypal Quest successful summation to Quest 2. A bulk of them were released aft the motorboat of Quest 2.

Granted, Quest 1 users should lone truly absorption connected the information spot decease date; adjacent then, the headset volition inactive beryllium capable to entree each store contented successful summation to being utilized arsenic a PC VR headset with Steam.