Meta Bundles 6-Month Quest+ With Quest 3 512GB, Adding Free Monthly Games

Q: With Meta closing its own studios, is the Xbox partnership a brilliant expansion or a desperate move to save Horizon+?

It looks more like a smart expansion than a last-ditch rescue, though it also reflects real pressure on Meta’s content strategy. The Xbox tie-in gives Horizon+ a clearer consumer pitch at a moment when Meta is closing first-party studios and relying more on third-party content. Adding Xbox Game Pass Starter Edition — more than 50 games plus 10 hours of cloud gaming a month — broadens the service beyond VR-only buyers. The upcoming controller-emulation update for Quest Touch controllers also removes friction, making Quest a more usable cloud-gaming device without extra hardware. That matters because Horizon+ was already a decent value for new Quest owners at $7.99 a month or $59.99 a year, with 100-plus Quest titles, rotating monthly games and discounts. The Xbox perk makes the subscription easier to justify for casual users who may not buy many native VR games. It also strengthens Quest’s position as the leading standalone VR ecosystem, where Meta still has scale advantages in hardware sales and store revenue. But the move is also a sign of weakness in one respect: Meta is no longer betting as heavily on first-party exclusives to drive subscriptions. Studio closures suggest Meta sees partnerships and platform services as lower-risk than funding expensive internal content. In that sense, Microsoft is helping fill a gap. So this is best read as a pragmatic expansion built from necessity: not desperation, but a strategic response to the harder economics of VR content.

3 articles · Updated · Gamesradar · Jul 24

Meta Quest+ gives paying subscribers free games each month, adding them to their library in a model similar to PlayStation Plus.
The service was bundled during the Quest 3 512GB launch window, when buyers could often get Meta Quest vouchers and a 6-month Quest+ subscription.
That offer is positioned as strongest for new Quest owners, since subscribers who do not already own many Meta Quest games are more likely to get value from the service.