Steam Hardware Survey - July 2025 results included (see latest post in this thread)

Agree @DaftnDirect - I see the Rift-S impacted by the "wait and see" situation by Quest-Link. This can not be a good thing for Lenovo, even though they build both units, they had hoped for more from the Rift-S than a side-show to the Quest (considering the rev-split).

I have to say I am agitated by the expectations on the Quest-Link, a last minute entry with a "catch-up" development plan - impacting the original business plan for their PC investment. This is a house of cards depending on a strong initial reaction from the community concerning latency. Very much a Google Stadia situation.  

It's an interesting time Kevin.
It could be argued that if Quest owners use Link a lot, then that in itself is contributing to PCVR take-up, in that software devs will be increasingly motivated to invest in PCVR titles to sell to users, whether they be Linked Quests or Rifts.

My only concern would be stand-alone hardware not giving as good an experience for PCVR, at least for this generation of headsets, in 2 aspects, comfort and graphical fidelity.

What's interesting is how that will play out. Will Link be a gateway for people to enjoy PCVR and then decide it's enough fun to invest in a PC dedicated headset as their next investment? will Oculus develop the Quest and Link to address any disparity with the Rift when used for PCVR?

For me, more PC software titles is now more important than anything else so I'm staying fairly optimistic about the effects of Link on the long term PCVR headset sales.

It will be interesting to see steamVR stats when this link cable appears as i wonder how steam will see this hardware when the quest is running steamvr games via the cable.

OmegaM4N said:

It will be interesting to see steamVR stats when this link cable appears as i wonder how steam will see this hardware when the quest is running steamvr games via the cable.

Yeah I was wondering the same thing, I have a feeling it'll be recognised as a Quest as I'm sure Steam will use its USB hardware identifier as per Windows rather than the way it's emulating a Rift but who knows!

DaftnDirect said:

It's an interesting time Kevin.
It could be argued that if Quest owners use Link a lot, then that in itself is contributing to PCVR take-up, in that software devs will be increasingly motivated to invest in PCVR titles to sell to users, whether they be Linked Quests or Rifts.

My only concern would be stand-alone hardware not giving as good an experience for PCVR, at least for this generation of headsets, in 2 aspects, comfort and graphical fidelity.

What's interesting is how that will play out. Will Link be a gateway for people to enjoy PCVR and then decide it's enough fun to invest in a PC dedicated headset as their next investment? will Oculus develop the Quest and Link to address any disparity with the Rift when used for PCVR?

For me, more PC software titles is now more important than anything else so I'm staying fairly optimistic about the effects of Link on the long term PCVR headset sales.

Could not agree more - interesting times indeed - but we need to temper the expectations.

From the initial reports (without the full software update) the Link is great, but there are serious issues with latency and operation / compatibility. That would mean, yes, the owners would be contributing to the PCVR scene, and also be buying content, but would be receiving a below WinMR quality experience - so a sub-PCVR experience. I really wanted to avoid a new race to the bottom. Going back to the bad old days of GearVR owners telling me they have "done VR", only to have their mind blown by actual room-scale VR!

I am waiting on the forums for someone to ask if they will be able to play the new HalflifeVR for the Index on their Quest Link - and then getting triggered when they are told the limitation, "...hey, but MarkZ told me this would be "as good as Rift!""

The key winners, (if allowed), will be the game studios, as they will have a winder number of sales options. Sadly the reality of some 400,000 Quest sales means that for most developer/investors they will have to sit on the fence a little longer before committing - and the more they sit on the fence, the more "splinters in the butt", and more opportunities to do something else with the investment - especially in the face of the new generation of consoles on the horizon.

kevinw729 said:

I am waiting on the forums for someone to ask if they will be able to play the new HalflifeVR for the Index on their Quest Link - and then getting triggered when they are told the limitation, "...hey, but MarkZ told me this would be "as good as Rift!""

Can you expand on this “limitation” please? Why do you think they wouldn’t be able to play Half Life VR on the Quest with Link? They’ve already said that Link will support using unknown sources like SteamVR games. 

Aside: I side-loaded the original Half Life onto my Quest this weekend with the Lambda1VR emulator engine. What a blast of nostalgia!

nalex66 said:

kevinw729 said:

I am waiting on the forums for someone to ask if they will be able to play the new HalflifeVR for the Index on their Quest Link - and then getting triggered when they are told the limitation, "...hey, but MarkZ told me this would be "as good as Rift!""

Can you expand on this “limitation” please? Why do you think they wouldn’t be able to play Half Life VR on the Quest with Link? They’ve already said that Link will support using unknown sources like SteamVR games. 

Aside: I side-loaded the original Half Life onto my Quest this weekend with the Lambda1VR emulator engine. What a blast of nostalgia!

I played through the intro sequence and really had some fun. There were quite a few glitches though but I haven't checked lately for updates.
Melee with the crowbar works very well though, better than it does with Fallout.

Personally I have a really hard time understanding why VR isn't more popular. We got the best games on the planet and no one is more immersed - for example these are my current games and apps (Oculus app), I consider them beyond awesome (ok, haven't tried Groundhog yet) - and I got a lot more:



There's so much awesome content that none of us have time to complete everything (and then there's always Elite, lol). 
Maybe the problem is that few still have tried VR, or don't like to wear the HMD... Everyone who tried my VR setup has been extremely impressed - but they don't go out and buy VR. Maybe too little spare time, can't find room for the play space, or it's too expensive. 
Now, where Asgard's Wrath doesn't seem to have had a lot of impact, I'm wondering if lack of content really is a problem - or if people don't like Vikings. Will Valve's flagship change anything? Will Stormland? I'm no longer sure... Then again, any impact of Asgard's Wrath, Stormland and the wait for Black Friday may not be registered in the Steam Hardware Survey until January or February 2020. 
Valve Index Reddit hasn't gotten many more member the last months (still 23K members), I wonder if the number of persons willing to pay for the Index has been reached already - with the usual slow growth already setting in...

Maybe good to have Zuckerberg and Newell to fund our toys, lol - not sure any of them need to make money of VR, I'm sure they won't die of hunger if Quest/Rift or Index don't sell. 

More semi-depressing results from November 2019 - or maybe it'll all change when the Quest Link Storm arrives, lol:


So September peaked with 1.04%
- then 0.01% down to October = 1.03%
- and now 0.01% down to 1.02%

It's quite stable. But again, Quest users are not included, but soon will be and that might increase PCVR users a lot. Asgard's Wrath does not seem to have had any noticeable impact, unless that game convinced more persons not to get rid of VR, lol. 
Any impacts of Alyx and Index availability in Canada + Japan probably will not be seen before the start of January or February 2020. 


Not much changed the last month here... 

This is terrible  :s - Unless the hideous Quest PCVR soon reveals itself...  B)



To put everything into perspective:

September 2019 = 1.04%
October 2019 = 1.03%
November = 1.02%
December 2019 = 0.87  :# 

I do have a strong feeling the numbers don't contain Quest PCVR, but still these number are depressing. Anyone knows how Quest PCVR is identified in SteamVR? According to this post Quest Link is recognized as Rift-S, but with Quest selling like hotcakes the +0.01% doesn't make sense - unless SteamVR doesn't work using Quest Link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/e05xcx/steamvr_recognizes_oculus_link_as_rift_s/

For market shares we see:



At least Index has gone from 4.93 to 6.65% which corresponds to a solid 35% increase in market share. Rift-S now has 18.4 % share up from 14.83, so that's a healthy 24% increase in Rift-S market share. Interesting to find out if Quest Link is added to Rift-S or not....