New Quest Store and App Lab apps won’t be allowed to support the original Oculus Quest after April 30.
Oculus Quest launched in May 2019, almost five years ago, featuring the Snapdragon 835 chipset from 2017. Meta stopped selling it upon launching Quest 2 in October 2020.
Meta first announced the slow deprecation of Quest 1 in January 2023, and the last system software release it got was v50 in February 2023, though it will continue to receive security updates and bugfixes until August this year. Quest 2, Pro, and 3 are now on v63.
Four Years Ago, Oculus Quest Redefined VR
Four years ago Oculus Quest launched, redefining the VR industry forever.
From April 30 newly created Quest Store and App Lab apps won’t show up in the store interface in Quest 1, developers won’t be able to upload builds for new apps that only support Quest 1, and builds for new apps that support multiple headsets including Quest 1 will have Quest 1 support blocked.
This only applies to newly created apps, to be clear. Existing apps will technically still be able to release updates that support Quest 1 if they want.
However, the Oculus SDK dropped support for Quest 1 in v51, which released in April 2023. That means developers using SDK versions newer than v50, required for features like Dynamic Resolution, Super Resolution, Virtual Keyboard, Multimodal, and Quest 3 features like the mixed reality Scene Mesh, Depth API, and Inside-Out Body Tracking already couldn’t continue to support Quest 1. That’s one of the reasons many Quest Store and App Lab apps have already dropped support for Quest 1.
Quest 2 arrived just 18 months after the original with a $100 cheaper price, higher resolution and refresh rate, and double the CPU & GPU performance. Multiple developers who have already dropped support for Quest 1 told UploadVR that it made up only a tiny fraction of their userbase, while its anaemic seven year old chipset was burdensome to continue to support.
This isn’t yet the complete end of Quest 1 though. Quest 1 owners can continue to use their headset, and install and use existing apps that choose to continue to support it. They can be sure any new app from April 30 will no longer support it, though few new releases support it already. Arguably the bigger problem is that security updates will end in August, though this has been known since early last year.
Unlike with some other consumer electronics companies Meta doesn’t offer a trade-in program, so Quest 1 owners will need to pay the full price to upgrade to a newer headset.
Editorial: Meta Moves Fast, But Leaves Customers Behind
Meta moves fast with its VR hardware, but often leaves customers in the dust.
