Oculus Quest 2 has been the world’s most popular VR headset for several years now, dominating the sales and usage charts thanks to its combination of solid performance, impressive software library, and most importantly, affordability. .
Now, its successor, Meta Quest 3, is following in its footsteps.
Just four months after its release, it’s the third most popular headset used on Steam (and will probably be the second most popular in the next Steam Hardware Survey). Additionally, the Quest 3 still appears to be a hit, even though it’s estimated that it’s not selling as well as the Quest 2 did four months after its release (and at nearly double the Quest 3’s launch price) Sales are expected to decrease considering Quest 2).
Despite its high price tag, $499.99 / £479.99 / AU$799.99, it’s still relatively affordable in the VR space, and its early success has led to the realization that accessibility is a make-or-break factor in the popularity of VR gadgets. Continuing an ongoing trend.
When it comes to high-end hardware like the Apple Vision Pro, which brings the wow factor back to VR (it’s hard not to be impressed with its crisp OLED display and ingenious eye and hand tracking system) There’s something to be said for that, but I’ll be honest: I don’t think its launch, and the announcement of other high-end, expensive headsets, will take VR back to its early, less affordable days. I was worried.
Now, I’m more confident than ever that Apple’s rumored cheap Vision Pro successor and other affordable hardware will arrive sooner rather than later.
chart rise
According to the Steam Hardware Survey, which tracks the popularity of hardware among participating Steam users, 14.05% of all Steam VR players used the Quest 3 in the last month. This means that his popularity has increased by 4.78% compared to last month’s results, putting him within striking distance of the second place spot currently held by Valve Index. His 15% of users prefer this product over other VR headsets and even more than 3 of his VR headsets. Half a year has passed since its release.
However, with 40.64% of Steam VR players preferring Oculus Quest 2, it still has a way to go to reach the top spot. The previous model of the Quest 3 has held this top spot for several years now, and it doesn’t look like it will lose out to the Quest 3 or any other headset for a while. The Quest 3 itself is doing well, but it’s not selling as fast as the Quest 2.
Average Steam player count for these months based on Steam Hardware Survey data for January 2024 (4 months after launch) and data for January 2021 (4 months after Quest 2 launch), and SteamDB data. Using Quest 3, the Quest 3 sold approximately 87% more units than the Quest 2 during the same period.
Given that the Quest 3 costs $499.99 / £479.99 / AU$799.99, it’s considerably more expensive than the Quest 2’s launch price of $299 / £299 / AU$479, and it’s not as fast as the previous generation. It’s impressive that we’ve reached the point where we can compete. And the Quest 2 sold very well from the beginning.
We don’t have exact early sales data for the Quest 2 – the meta is only highlighted when the device passes certain major milestones – but we do know that after 5 months, total sales will be higher than all other Oculus VR We know it exceeded total headset sales. Combined, some of them haven’t been released for more than five years. According to a March 2023 leak, Meta continues to sell approximately 20 million Quest 2 units. This is believed to be about the same sales speed as the Xbox Series X, which was released around the same time.
Quest 2’s 87% sales figure can be taken with a grain of salt. You can read how I arrived at this number at the end of this article. We had to pull data from several sources and make some reasonable assumptions, but these numbers and the popularity of the Quest 2 and 3 on Steam suggest that affordability remains the strongest in the VR space. It shows that it is the driving force. Therefore, I would like other headset manufacturers to take note.
The horribly expensive future of VR
Apple Vision Pro is by no means unpopular. The report claims that the headset had between 160,000 and 200,000 pre-orders ahead of its release on February 2, 2024 (some of which came at a ridiculously high price increase). (some have been listed on eBay, others have been returned by disappointed Vision Pro customers).
Its early popularity is no surprise. No matter what Mark Zuckerberg says about the Quest 3’s superiority, the Apple Vision Pro is the best of the best VR headsets from a technical standpoint. There’s some debate about the comfort and immersion of the software, but the eye tracking, incredibly sharp OLED display, and beautiful design make up for it.
Unfortunately, thanks to these high-end specs and some ridiculous design choices like the outer OLED display for EyeSight (which allows bystanders to see the wearer’s eyes while the device is being worn); This headset comes with a rather hefty price tag of $3,499. 256GB model (not yet available outside the US).
Looking at this, and seeing Apple refocusing its attention on the VR space as high-end rivals like the Samsung XR headset emerge, we might not see an early return to VR. I admit I was a little worried. Accessible days. At the time, a headset cost around $1,000 / £1,000 / AU$1,500, and a VR-enabled PC cost just as much (or more).
Apple has a way of moving technology conversations and development in the direction it chooses. Will it turn a more niche technology into the mainstream, as smartwatches did with the Apple Watch, or will it change the names of established terms (since Apple started using them, VR) through sheer force of will? Computing and 3D video are now exclusively referred to as spatial computing and spatial video (phrase).
Sure, there’s something to be said about the wonders of top-of-the-line technology, but this is Apple’s way so we don’t get overwhelmed by it while more affordable options are forgotten. wanted to move the industry with Vision Pro.
The numbers from the Steam Hardware Survey allayed those concerns. This means that meaningful low-cost hardware like the Quest 2 and 3, despite being newer, don’t have nearly as impressive displays or specs compared to many older, more expensive models. But it’s still so popular that it might go nowhere soon.
In fact, I’m more convinced than ever that Apple, Samsung, and others need to launch their own affordable VR headsets soon. Companies other than Apple, especially, can’t rely on legions of rabid fans who will eat up everything they release.
If they don’t launch a budget-friendly – but still worthwhile – VR headset, Meta may once again be left as the only real contender in this space of VR. Sure, I like the Meta headsets I’ve used so far, but nothing promotes great technology or price like the right competition. And this is something that proves that the meta doesn’t really have at the moment.
Where does my data come from?
It’s important to know where your data comes from and what assumptions the people working with it have made, but equally, not everyone will find this interesting and it can get very long and distracting. may scatter. So I put this section at the end for those who want to see my research on the 87% sales comparison between Oculus Quest 2 and Meta Quest 3 4 months after their respective launches.
As mentioned above, most of the data for this work was collected from the Steam Hardware Survey. The results page only shows numbers for the most recent month, so I had to rely on his Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive to see historical data for the Steam Hardware Survey.
If you want to find out the relative popularity of a headset in a particular month, just read the numbers in the survey results. However, to compare his four-month sales for Quest 2 and Quest 3, we used SteamDB player counts and had to make some assumptions.
The first assumption is that the Steam Hardware Survey data is consistent for all users. Steam users must opt in to the survey, so when it says that 2.24% of Steam users used a VR headset in January 2024, what it actually means is that Steam hardware was used that month. 2.24% of survey participants used a VR headset. There is no reason to believe that the survey sample is not representative of Steam’s user base as a whole. This is an assumption that is generally taken for granted when looking at hardware survey data. But if you’re going to analyze where my numbers come from, you’d better do a thorough analysis.
Next, we had to assume that Steam users only use one VR headset each month and do not share their headsets with other Steam users. With these assumptions, if Meta Quest 3 is used in 14.05% of Steam VR sessions, then in January 2024, 14.05% of Steam users (representing 2.24% of all Steam users) will be using a VR headset. I can say I own a Quest 3. Not making these assumptions would result in undercounting and overcounting, respectively, which would cancel each other out. Also, without this assumption, you will not be able to proceed beyond this step because you will lack the necessary data.
Valve doesn’t publish total user numbers for Steam, and the last time it published monthly active user data was in 2021, which was an average for the entire year rather than monthly. There is also no mention of how many people will participate in the hardware study. Only the number of people currently using Steam is exposed. This information is collected by SteamDB and allows me and others to track Steam’s daily active users for January 2021 and January 2024 (other months as well, but these are the only two I care about). (DAU) You will be able to see the average.
The penultimate assumption was that DAU as a percentage of total Steam users in January 2021 was the same as DAU as a percentage of total Steam users in January 2024. The exact percentage of DAUs to total does not match. Not significant (could be 1% or 100%). Assuming consistency over the past two months, the DAU numbers (25,295,361 in January 2024 and 24,674,583 in January 2021) are the percentage of Steam users who used Quest 3 and Quest 2 in those months, respectively. You can hang it by 0.31% and 0.37% – Finally, compare the numbers to each other.
As a result, the number of Steam users using Quest 3 in January 2024 is 87.05% of the number of Steam users using Quest 2 in January 2021.
My final assumption was that Quest headset owners are no longer more or less likely to connect their device to a PC to play Steam VR. So if their popularity on Steam four months after their respective launches is 87%, then the Quest 3 sold 87% as well as the Quest 2 after the first four months of its release.
