Quest maker Meta is having its cake and eating it
On April 19, 2026, Meta increased the price of Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest 3 S hardware due to a “global surge in the price of critical components.”
The company (formerly known as Facebook) said a memory chip crisis is “impacting almost every category of consumer electronics, including VR,” and claimed it must pass some of that cost to consumers in order to keep producing and supporting Quest hardware and software.
As noted by Bloomberg in February, that component shortage is being driven by rampant investment in AI datacenters by companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and—would you look at that—Meta.
Earlier today, the U.S. tech giant announced a new strategic venture with investment management firm BlackRock to build a new data centre in El Paso, Texas.
“The state-of-the-art data center campus, currently under construction in El Paso, Texas, will have 1 gigawatt of compute capacity and will play an essential role in bringing Meta’s AI technologies to life, accelerating progress on AI models and supporting enhancements to the core business,” reads a press release.
“Meta will provide construction management, administrative, and property management services for the campus, and will be the initial sole occupant of the campus upon completion. The transaction is expected to close in the coming days and the venture expects to begin bringing this capacity online in 2028.”
Meta and BlackRock will sink around $14 billion into the data center to help support the former’s long-term AI ambitions. The company continues to make inroads onto the AI sector while trimming its operations within the VR and AR space.
The company’s Reality Labs division, which houses its video game business, has lost around $83.6 billion in six years after being tasked with wrestling the metaverse into being.
During that time, Meta has shuttered a number of its internal VR studios—including Asgard’s Wrath developer Sanzaru Games, Deadpool VR maker Twisted Pixel Games, and Resident Evil 4 VR developer Armature Studio.
Meta is not the first tech company operating within the video game industry to lament surging component costs while simultaneously pumping up the price of hardware. Microsoft has repeatedly increased the price of Xbox hardware in recent years after pledging to spend at least $80 billion on AI infrastructure and training in 2025. Like Meta, Microsoft has also seen fit to make mass layoffs a recurring event.
