Oculus Quest content to be 'forward-compatible' with next headset

Facebook is getting a lot more serious about its VR investment. The company just released its quarterly earnings call, and it had some news to share about the VR business. The Quest 2 is selling very well, but there's another headset in development.

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Facebook released the Quest 2 in October 2020, and the device has been selling very well. Facebook never talks directly about sales numbers of its VR devices, but Mark Zuckerberg said the Quest 2 "is on track to becoming the first mainstream virtual reality headset."

Oculus falls under the "other" category in Facebook's revenue figures, which grew significantly over the last year. The last quarter of 2019 brought in $346 million, whereas, in 2020, Facebook's "other" revenue topped $885 million. It's unclear what else falls in that category, but it's a safe bet that Quest 2 and its content drive the lion's share of that revenue increase.

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Facebook is excited about the Quest 2, but it's not sitting idly by in the hardware department. Zuckerberg stated that it's currently working on another VR headset, which would be compatible with the existing Quest ecosystem of apps and games.

"We're continuing to work on new hardware as well," said Zuckerberg. "The new hardware will fit the same platform, so the content that works on Quest 2 should be forward-compatible [with the new headset], so that we're going to build one larger install base around the virtual reality headsets that we have."

No details about the new hardware were revealed during the earnings call. It sounds like Facebook may be planning to sell multiple headsets at once. Maybe we'll see a higher-tier model with better displays and other features that sells at a higher price point.