Meta Quest 2 Is The Most Used Headset On SteamVR

Virtual Reality is slowly but surely planting its feet in the technological world. More people are now buying VR Headsets and since the introduction of the Metaverse, the market’s interest has only increased. But, people still mostly use VR for video games, and one of gaming’s most prominent websites, Steam, has now released its VR numbers for November.

Meta Quest 2 is the most used headset on SteamVR, while also having the highest Marketshare of any company. On the other hand, Pico 4 was the fastest-growing new headset on the market in November. We will take an in-depth look at these figures below.

Major Takeaways

• Meta Quest 2 is in use by 41.12% of SteamVR users, with Meta also having a 63% Marketshare.
• Pico 4 is the fastest-growing new headset, with Valve Index being No.2 overall.
• The overall PC VR market has shown little growth in recent years, with no big AAA games or software.

VR gaming news website, MIXED News first reported these numbers to the masses. SteamVR is Valve’s website tool that allows players to experience VR gaming through several headsets. All of this VR headset data is for November and was found out by the monthly survey conducted by Valve. 

Interestingly, only 2.03% of Steam players use the SteamVR tool for VR gaming. So, if the website had 132 million monthly users in November, only 2.7 million people used SteamVR for gaming. The peak value of SteamVR users was recorded in May 2021 at 2.31%, so it seems like the has been a decline.

Most of the players use Meta Quest 2 according to the numbers, with 41.12% using this headset for gaming. Even though it is a 0.37% decline from the previous month, it still has the highest Marketshare. Behind it is the Valve Index, which 17.52% of the SteamVR players use and these aren’t bad numbers for Valve’s own VR headset.

Oculus Rift S is at No.3 with 13.37% of players using this headset. HTC Vive and Oculus Rift close out the top 5 at No.4 and No.5 respectively. Windows Mixed Reality is at No.6 with 5.25% SteamVR users and 2019’s Meta Quest is at No.7.

Three HTC headsets close out the top 10 with the HTC Vive Pro, HTC Vive Cosmos, and HTC Vive Pro 2 all having Marketshare. Pico 4 is the first serious competitor of Meta Quest 2 and takes the No.11 spot with a 0.67% Marketshare. However, seeing that it came out in October this year and only in 13 European countries alongside South Korea and Japan, this is impressive.

It is the fastest-growing headset this month, with a 0.48% increase in users since October. Pico 4 also beat The Meta Quest Pro, which also launched in October and is four times as expensive but doesn’t even make the list. Even though Pico 4 has a lot of ground to makeup, it has had a promising start.

MIXED thinks that if Pico 4 can have a good holiday season, it can overtake the HTC headsets on SteamVR. The race to catch up has just begun but when compared to Meta Quest Pro’s 0.13% increase on Steam, it’s a better start. However, you should keep in mind that these numbers show only give indirect info about sales as the market is much wider.

When we talk about overall Marketshare, Meta wins again with a landslide. It has a 63.41% share in the SteamVR headset market, with Valve being No.2 with 17.52%. HTC and WMR are No.3 and No.4 respectively, while Andere closes out the top 5 at 1.84%.

Pico holds the No.6 spot due to its Pico 4 and Pico Neo 3 headsets. Meanwhile, Pimax has the lowest Marketshare of any company on SteamVR. Hence, the clear winner of another Virtual Reality market is once again none other than Meta.

It’s difficult to collect data about how much these SteamVR headsets are used from these numbers. However, the monthly average for concurrent SteamVR users does give a rough picture according to MIXED. A high of 24,000 SteamVR users is apparent in January 2022, while this November it was down to 15,000.

Even though concurrent users will increase in December due to holidays, the PC VR market has shown little growth. In recent years, the lack of AAA PC VR games and the high prices of graphic cards have stagnated the VR market on the platform. When Half-Life: Alyx came out with the Valve Index, VR saw a resurgence in PC gaming.

But, the medium has been again left to fend for its own with no new big games or software. It is kind of tough to watch especially when PSVR 2 is getting dozens of games for its much-anticipated release. Hopefully, the rumors about a new SteamVR headset are true and we see more VR games for PC players.