Meta Will Now be Able to Sell Its New Budget VR Headset in China

After 14 years of no access to China, Meta has finally managed to strike a deal with the Chinese videogame maker and the world’s largest videogame company, Tencent Holdings. Starting in late 2024, Meta will be able to sell their new lower-cost virtual-reality headset in China.

This comes as great news for Meta as it will be able to increase its audience and sales dramatically. Flora Tang, a senior analyst at Counterpoint, told the Wall Street Journal, “Meta’s partnership with Tencent is likely to enhance the sales and adoption of such extended reality devices in China.”

First things first, all of these details are subject to change. Also, Beijing has recently made the regulations around video games and other digital content a bit tighter, so we’re not sure how that will play out concerning this new deal. Moreover, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has publicly critiqued China quite recently since Tiktok has grown in popularity and challenged Meta’s social media monopoly. This has led to a negative image of Zuckerberg in Beijing, which also impacted the deal signed with Tencent.

The new Meta headset will be a budget-friendly version. The company will keep its costs down by using lower-cost lenses. These lenses would be much cheaper than the ones used in the most recent model, the Quest 3. The 2024 version will also feature a more advanced graphic processing unit than the one used in Meta Quest 2, launched more than three years ago.

The reporting says Meta would take a bigger share of the sales from the headsets. In contrast, Tencent Holdings’ share will come more from the content and service revenue part, such as software subscriptions and videogame sales.