The XR landscape has changed dramatically over the past five years, resulting in the prosperity of standalone headsets and new entrants such as Apple and (SOON) Google. Nevertheless, the PC VR platform continues to grow slowly and steadily.
So much has happened in VR over the last five years, so if you told me in early 2020, I don’t know if I believed you or not.
After all, I have to say that Facebook is no longer called Facebook. The company then went on to disband the “Oculus” brand, which for a long time has been the most famous name in the industry for enthusiasts and outsiders. And you’ll have to tell me that in spite of that, Facebook Meta has managed to turn the standalone quest headset into a major VR platform.
Not only that, but I have to convince me that Apple is the first to jump into the market with its own headset. Ah, that Google will soon follow behind, using the complete Android XR operating system that supports the flagship headset created by Samsung.
Not to mention Microsoft has abandoned the Windows MR platform and giving up on Hololens (actually something I might have believed).
in spite of All of thesethe OG VR platform (PC VR) is still kicking and is actually continuing to grow.
Monthly connected headsets for steam over the past five years
Each month, valves gather information from Steam users to determine baseline statistics about the types of hardware and software used by the platform population, and see how it changes over time, including using VR headsets.
The data shared in the survey represents the number of headsets connected to steam in a particular month, so we call them “monthly connected headsets” to clarify the results. It is the closest official number for “monthly active VR users” of steam, with warning that it only tells the number of VR headsets connectionnot the number actually used.
Valve’s data is a convenient way to go, but see which headsets are the most popular on Steam. Percentage of Steam’s population– In itself, it is an unexplained, constantly changing form.
If you only saw percent I think that the category of Steam VR users needs to be reduced.
But this is not a whole story. It is necessary to consider that the steam population itself is growing a lot The past five years. In fact, we have almost all steam populations. It’s doubled At that time.
Makes data easier to understand The road to VR Maintain the model based on past research data, along with official data points directly from valves and steam. This aims to explain and estimate changes in the population of steam Actual count (It’s not just percent) – of headsets used in steam.
In this way, we can see that the raw number of VR headsets used on Steam is actually slow, but is steadily growing over time.
So, Steam itself is growing faster and faster than SteamVR users, but the total number of VR users is steadily climbing. In other words: percent The population of the steam population using VR headsets is decreasing from a developer’s perspective as the number of potential VR customers is increasing.
This certainly isn’t the case if the valve didn’t set up STEAMVR from the start as an open platform for headset manufacturers to choose from. With at least 24 different headsets used on the platform each month, SteamVR flocks to the much larger and most diverse PC VR ecosystem.
PC VR definitely has a meta to thank for its continued growth after all these years of growth and landscape change. The wide availability and low cost of Quest headsets make many new people fold VR and use PC VR headsets as well. Meta headsets make up a whopping 70% of the headsets connected each month on Steam today.
What will you keep for the next five years of PC VR? See you in 2030!
