The news: Meta is planning another VR headset, codenamed Loma, to compete with Apple’s beleaguered Vision Pro, per The Wall Street Journal. The product will look similar to its Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses—rather than a traditional headset goggles design—and feature higher-fidelity video than the Quest line of headsets.

Meta is offering millions of dollars to Disney, A24, and others for exclusive IP-based gaming content to avoid the Vision Pro’s pitfall of lacking compelling content.

Trying again: Although the Quest is popular with kids, it hasn’t gained mainstream traction.

Loma, which will cost under $1,000, could be Meta’s do-over, informed by lessons learned from the Quest. It’s a much-needed consumer device for its Reality Labs division, which is losing billions.

But considering only 11% of US gamers primarily use VR headsets for gaming, per Attest, compared with 56% for consoles, that low adoption makes Loma a risky bet.

Content is king: Meta’s strategy of focusing on apps well before Loma’s release may be to avoid the poor performance of Vision Pro sales.

Apple didn’t invest in Vision Pro-exclusive content and, as of January, the headset has less than 1,900 active apps, per AppFigures. By comparison, more than 20,000 iPad apps had been created by mid-2010, a few months after the tablet’s launch.

Cost factor: Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said that pricing is key to success and that Apple may have overshot what consumers are willing to pay for.

• Loma’s price tag will be higher than the $299 Quest 3S, but far below the $3,499 Vision Pro.
• “(Display resolution quality) is just a cost-benefit question of, ‘Hey, sure people would love this. Would they love it at the price you would have to charge for it?’” Bosworth said.

Our take: Loma will need to balance resolution quality and utility to stay affordable, as pricing may be the single most important factor in VR adoption. However, it may be competing more with its own offerings than with the Vision Pro—a product that has only sold a million units compared with more than 20 million for Quest headsets.

Meta’s renewed headset push shows the company is learning from past missteps, but success will hinge on whether Loma can offer must-have experiences at a justifiable price.