Meta has made the unexpected decision to give up on its aspirations to create a high-end augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headset that was meant to compete with Apple's Vision Pro. This decision has shocked the tech community. With this choice, Meta's approach to navigating the fiercely competitive AR/VR technology market and the larger goal of creating the Metaverse has undergone a substantial change. Let's examine this decision's specifics and ramifications.

The Information claims that although Meta had instructed staff to cease production on the La Jolla headgear as of last week, the company had already begun creating the item in November. The La Jolla headset's use of costly Micro-OLED panels played a factor in the decision.

The action raises the possibility that Meta is losing interest in expensive VR as a whole. It was supposedly intended to keep the headset around $1,000, but considering how costly Micro-OLED can be to produce, this was becoming more and more of a challenge. To make matters worse, the $3,500 Vision Pro has not been well received by developers or users, which begs the issue of whether there is indeed a market for a high-end rival. The Quest Pro, which retailed for $1,499 at launch, had negative reviews and swiftly lost popularity, which doesn't help either.

On paper, though, Meta appears to be downplaying the cancellation of La Jolla.

We always have a lot of prototypes under development. However, we don't put them all into production," Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said in response to the announcement on Threads. "We carry some ahead and let go of others. Such decisions are common, and narratives based on rumors about a single action will never present the whole picture.

In spite of this, Meta still intends to release further headsets and mixed reality technology soon. A less expensive Quest headgear, codenamed Ventura, may launch later this year, according to earlier sources. Parallel to this, Meta Connect, scheduled for next month, is supposedly where Meta will unveil some new augmented reality glasses. Similarly, there are rumors that a normal and premium version of the Quest 4 will be available sometime in 2026.