Meta has reportedly canceled a project for a high-end mixed reality headset to compete with Apple's Vision Pro

The Information cites two Meta employees who claim that the Reality Labs division has abandoned the headset, codenamed “La Jolla” Reason Because it was impossible to make the kind of premium product the company wanted at a price point that consumers would be willing to pay

The biggest drawback seemed to be the “ultra-high resolution” micro OLED display the company tried to include The article claims that Meta believes that a feasible price would need to be less than $1,000 per unit, which is not possible at this time

It is not clear whether this $1,000 figure refers to component costs or the final suggested retail price for consumers However, the latter seems likely, given that Meta was notorious for being forced to reduce the price of its Quest Pro headset just 129 days after launching it for $1,499

It is not clear whether La Jolla was supposed to be Quest Pro 2 or something else entirely, but in the end the mood music surrounding the mixed reality remains the same

The Quest Pro's lackluster public reception is probably due to other things that are cooling Meta's appetite for high-end headsets Despite Apple's marketing prowess, the company has reportedly cut production and shifted its focus from true sequels to lower-priced models in order to encourage widespread adoption

The good news for VR fans is that this will not affect the lower-priced Quest series; Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously boasted that Quest 3 was “a better product, period” when compared to Vision Pro

Interestingly, this is not the first time The Information has reported that Meta has lost faith in high-end VR as a commercially viable product The site claimed last year that Meta was scaling back production, but Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth denied the story

“Until we make a decision, there will be no Quest Pro 2 headset What I will say is that there are a number of prototype headsets out there” Some of them will say, 'It's not the right one,' and stop development Some of them spin up, saying, 'It's the right one'

In other words, just because one headset is deemed unsuitable for progress does not mean that something similar will not emerge at a later date

Bosworth has already expressed virtually the same sentiment in a meta-owned thread in response to The Information's latest article “Just regularly scheduled public service announcements: we always have many prototypes in development,” he wrote 'But not all of them will be commercialized But not all of them will be commercialized

“Decisions like this happen all the time, and a story based on chatter about one individual decision never tells the real story,” he added