Although Quest 2 is a standalone headset, it can also be connected to a PC to play VR games on the PC via Oculus PC and Steam. The success of the headset holidays has clearly spread across the PC VR landscape, as the latest data shows that Quest 2 is now the second most used headset on Steam, with the total number of headphones connected monthly on the platform reaching a new historical high of 2.6 million.
VR headphones connected monthly on Steam
Each month, Valve collects information from Steam users to determine some basic statistics about what kind of hardware and software is used by the platform’s population and to see how things are changing over time, including the use of RV.
The data shared in the survey represents the number of headphones connected to Steam in a given month, so we call the resulting number of ‘headphones connected monthly’ for clarity; is the closest official figure that exists to ‘monthly active VR users’ on Steam, with the exception that it only tells us how many VR headsets have been connected, not how many were actually used.
While Valve data is a useful way to see which headphones are most popular on Steam, the trend for monthly connected headphones has always been overshadowed because the data is provided exclusively as percentages relative to the Steam population—That is an undeclared and constantly floating figure.
To demystify the data Path to VR maintains a model, based on historical research data along with official data points directly from Valve and Steam, which aims to correct the change in Steam population to estimate the real count-not the Percent—From headphones used on Steam.
Thanks to the sudden increase in the holiday, the headphones connected monthly on Steam reached a new record of 2.6 million. This appears to have been partially driven by Quest 2’s holiday success and the portion of users who are using it as a PC VR headset. This accompanies the recent release of Quest 2 on Facebook as “one of this year’s warm Christmas gifts”.
Sharing VR headsets on Steam
Looking beyond the general number of headphones connected monthly on Steam, we also see that Quest 2 has become an important player on the platform, jumping to position # 2 among the most common headphones on Steam with 17.4%, behind only Rift S by 23.4% (+ 0.83%)
The jump is significant, but not as sudden as it may seem. This is the first month that Valve has divided Quest 2 into its own category in the data; in the months prior to the launch of Quest 2, it appears that Quest and Quest 2 have been grouped into the same category.
With Quest 2 now getting a dedicated category looks as Quest lost a lot of participation last month, but in reality this is due to the reclassification of Quest 2 in its own category. Both headsets have probably gained share since the previous month, although Quest 2 has clearly seen most of the growth. If grouped as they were before, Quest + Quest 2 would have been classified as the most used headset on Steam, with a 25% share.
Another interesting part of the most recent data is some growth in Windows Mixed Reality, which gained + 0.93% to reach 6.38% of the headphones on Steam. This is a small but notable increase for the category, which has been slowly but steadily decreasing for over a year. The growth is probably driven by the recent launch of the HP Reverb G2, the first WMR headset to be launched in some time.
The chart above also reveals another telling trend: areas of the chart that become more compressed over time show less dominance over any headset, which means that there are more and more significant headset options among customers.
From a vendor’s perspective, however, Facebook is becoming increasingly dominant, with Oculus headsets now holding a combined 56.4% share of headsets on Steam.