They have been heavily subsidized. Throwing them out for free wouldn't do anything for anyone. People attach monetary value to product value intrinsically.
I say Meta is a heavy lifter that can fully subside them. They want us to strap an ad ridden device to our heads? Won't really work with the price higher than $0.
It doesn't matter if it cost $0 when it just ends up collecting dust. Quest2 go for just $200, that's already plenty of cheap for pretty much everybody. It's the whole software and content landscape that still isn't very compelling. Worse yet, they even do a terrible job of highlighting all the good stuff you actually can do in VR. They also do a bad job at bringing content into VR that could easily take advantage of it, e.g. 3D movies, porting old games into VR, etc.