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

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Latest results:

These results are compared, at least for the Rift, to August when Rift peaked at 0.35 %. Since August 2018 Rift has decreased about 6 % (from 0.35 to 0.33). Vive also decreased.

Compared to other HMDs we see from April to September (note that this image hasn't been updated to October yet):

When updated to October I'd expect:

Rift = 45 %
Vive = 42 %
WMR = 8 %
Vive Pro = 3 %
Rift DK2 = 1 %

Source: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

BTW - some history:

April 2018:

Oculus Rift 0.20%

HTC Vive 0.18%

Windows Mixed Reality 0.01%

Oculus Rift DK2 0.01%

Oculus Rift DK1 0.00%

Unknown 0.00%

July 2018:

Oculus Rift 0.32%

HTC Vive 0.31%

Windows Mixed Reality 0.05%
HTC Vive Pro 0.01%

Oculus Rift DK2 0.01%

Oculus Rift DK1 0.00%

I guess it's more or less a stand still since July for Rift and the original Vive... I don't think the Odyssey+ has had any impact on the WMR results above, the Odyssey+ is much too new - if it'll have any impact, it won't be before the Steam Hardware Survey November 2018 results.

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RuneSR2Author

Honored Contributor

Latest numbers - Quest 2 moving further up probably due to Christmas, but we'll need January numbers to see the bigger Christmas effect:

While the above numbers look good for the Quest 2, the percentage of Steam users with hmds really did not move much - gaining a small 0.09%. This may imply that VR users changed hmds rather than getting more numerous. Thus Quest 2 may have been feeding on Index, Rift-S, Vive and the original Quest. What we're seeing here may be more a trend of Quest 2 replacing other hmds. Then again, let's see what happens next month, when all the new Quest 2 owners have had time to connect to Steam.

The market percentages look like this - 64% use an Oculus hmd, and 16% use an Index, and about 12.5% use a HTC hmd:

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD "Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2Author

Honored Contributor

The results from January 2022 finally arrived - these are important, because the December 2021 did not fully include the effect of many getting a hmd as a Christmas present. But results from January 2022 should include that - and maybe many got a Quest 2:

Not really sure if we're seeing a Christmas effect here - the 8 hmds with red numbers listed just below the Quest 2 in total lost 6% - and Quest 2 gained 6.4% - so maybe some just switched hmds, who knows...

The important number is the total number of Steam users with connected hmds, which is now 2.14 %, and probably the highest number ever for PCVR. A full year ago, Steam had an estimated number of 120 mill users - that number probaby is even higher today, as Steam has just had the highest number ever of concurrent users:

https://www.thegamer.com/steam-29-million-concurrent-users/

So 2% in January 2022 is not the same as 2% in January 2021. If there're now about 140 mill Steam users, then 2.14% would be equal to about 3 mill PCVR users.

2/3 or 67% of SteamVR users now use an Oculus hmd - which may be a new record:

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD "Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

D

DaftnDirect

Honored Contributor

I saw this this morning and although I was expecting another increase in Quest users I was thinking maybe another 3% rise not 6.

As to whether people are moving from other headsets to Quest, there must be a reasonable percentage of Index, G2 and Vive headset owners who have multiple headsets, including a Quest in order to access the stand-alone library, some may want it for transportable VR or VR that's accessible in rooms away from their PC when they're not seated for simming.

Expensive headsets also won't give meaningful benefits unless you have the disposable income to match the headset with a top GPU and even then they may be finding the difference isn't huge. Especially when compared to the benefits of being untethered for PC games that benefit from free movement.

I think even if prices were similar, people would slowly shift to headsets that can be used with and without PCs, with and without a cable, with two software libraries rather than one.... this isn't the first month showing a shift.

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RuneSR2Author

Honored Contributor

Not sure where they get these numbers from, but Road To VR just published that SteamVR is used by 3.4 mill persons:

Source: https://www.roadtovr.com/monthly-connected-vr-headsets-steam-survey-january-2022/#1638518376923-5c8f13d9-707a544f-2e8c

Thus PCVR has never been stronger - and maybe this pie is easier to understand:

RoadToVR also mentions the important point that even if Index got reduced in percentage, it grew in number - so Index hmds got more numerous the last months, but as even more users got a Quest 2 instead, and Steam also grew with many more non-VR users, one should be careful not to confuse a percentage reduction in VR hmds with a reduction in the number of hmd users:

"However, despite Rift S, Index, HTC Vive, and Windows VR losing share, all of these headsets actually gained in count. That’s because the size of the pie itself grew enough to more than cover the losses in share."

Read it all here: https://www.roadtovr.com/monthly-connected-vr-headsets-steam-survey-january-2022/#1638518376923-5c8f13d9-707a544f-2e8c

Also the 3.4 mill connected hmds maybe easily correspond to more than 5 mill SteamVR users, because many remove the hmd from their gaming rigs when not in use.

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD "Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

Zenbane

Honored Contributor

RuneSR2 wrote:

Thus PCVR has never been stronger - and maybe this pie is easier to understand:

Yup, and with Quest users being in the majority, the numbers make it clear that Quest is driving PCVR forward moreso than any other headset. 😁

Given Quest 2’s significant growth, most other headsets gave up some share of the pie. The Oculus Rift S and Valve’s Index headset saw the most significant losses in share, with falling to 13.10% (−1.67%) and 14.36% (−1.43%), respectively.

Quest 2 with a high-end PC + GPU is currently the best PCVR experience available imo; specifically due to having superior clarity (reduced SDE and Glare) on top of being 100% tetherless PCVR.

A

Anonymous

What I would love to see is what percentage of overall Quest 2 users are using them to connect to the PC. That would be an interesting number.

RuneSR2Author

Honored Contributor

If 46% of 3.4 mill SteamVR users have Quest 2s that would be about 1.6 mill. Might fit well with 10 mill sold in 2020 (3 mill) + 2021 (7 mill) - and then about 10 - 15 % connecting to Steam.... I would not be surprised if about 90% do no use PCVR. 2c.

PS. Based on 3.4 mill users - that would be 500.000 Indices and 140.000 Rift CV1s. And 18.000 Vive Pro 2s 🙂

The price of 500.000 Indices would be at $1k = $ 500 mill. The price of 1.6 mill Quest 2 at $300 each would be about $ 500 mill too. So much the same total amounts - but only for PCVR, Quest 2 has sold much more based on 10 mill numbers (about $3 billion). That's today's fun math 😉

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD "Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

Zenbane

Honored Contributor

RuneSR2 wrote:
If 46% of 3.4 mill SteamVR users have Quest 2s that would be about 1.6 mill. Might fit well with 10 mill sold in 2020 (3 mill) + 2021 (7 mill) - and then about 10 - 15 % connecting to Steam.... I would not be surprised if about 90% do no use PCVR. 2c.

I can see a scenario where this is accurate. PCVR was big back from 2016-2018. After that, the PCVR market started to become rather stale. Even on this forum, the type of PCVR titles that are advertised over the last few years are low-end experiences that are more about "PCVR for the sake of PCVR."

The biggest and best PCVR titles over the last 2 years have been Lone Echo 2 and HL:Alyx. That's it.

The 90% of Quest users who don't connect to PCVR really aren't missing much other than a handful of AAA experiences.

If we were to remove Flight Sim titles and users from the PCVR count, I would be interested in the number that remains pushing PCVR forward. Now that would be quite an interesting number!

A

Anonymous

Well there are flight and racing sim users that are apparently enough to keep folks like Pimax, HTC, HP and Varjo to name a few developing headsets for that user base. I think Varjo maybe got a larger response to their expensive Aero headset than they even anticipated with current lead time running around 3 months or more now. And Steam having trouble keeping Lighthouse 2.0 tracking systems in stock.

And yes even Quest 2's are popular now in those genre's as is evidenced by the numbers of Steam VR Quest 2 users. I would say a very large portion of those connecting to Steam VR are flight and race sim fans. They are especially good for those looking to try out VR with their sims and getting their feet wet. I see this almost daily where sim fans are now getting into VR for their sims via the Quest 2 with Link/Wireless. Oftentimes leading to users upgrading to higher end headsets as time goes by.

RuneSR2Author

Honored Contributor

I do monitor many games and apps on Steam, and I'm really not seeing a great impact on the number of ratings. It's not like ratings are exploding in numbers compared to a few years ago, at least that's not my impression. Being flooded by tons of Quest 2 users could indicate many more sales and ratings, but I'm simply not seeing it. Also not in the Rift Store - during the last 6 months, many Rift games have gotten close to no more ratings (Lone Echo did get 300 more, but that was due to the $10 sale which lasted for months). So nice to have more users, but they need to start opening those wallets - kinda feels like the new Quest 2 users aren't buying anything in the PCVR stores (but may spend all their cash in the Quest Store). Maybe they do buy a PCVR sim or two and that's it 😉

I've said it before, maybe we should all ask ourselves - how many PCVR games and apps did we buy the last month? 😉

I actually bought one yesterday, I'll post something about it later 🙂

Edit: it's here: https://forums.oculusvr.com/t5/Games-and-Apps/Tinertia-surprisingly-fun-and-challenging-VR-platform-game/td-p/944802 😇

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD "Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

A

Anonymous

RuneSR2 wrote:
I do monitor many games and apps on Steam, and I'm really not seeing a great impact on the number of ratings. It's not like ratings are exploding in numbers compared to a few years ago, at least that's not my impression. Being flooded by tons of Quest 2 users could indicate many more sales and ratings, but I'm simply not seeing it. Also not in the Rift Store - during the last 6 months, many Rift games have gotten close to no more ratings (Lone Echo did get 300 more, but that was due to the $10 sale which lasted for months). So nice to have more users, but they need to start opening those wallets - kinda feels like the new Quest 2 users aren't buying anything in the PCVR stores (but may spend all their cash in the Quest Store). Maybe they do buy a PCVR sim or two and that's it 😉

I've said it before, maybe we should all ask ourselves - how many PCVR games and apps did we buy the last month? 😉

I actually bought one yesterday, I'll post something about it later 🙂

Part of the reason could be that many of those connected Quest 2's are being used by the flight and racing simmers.

RuneSR2Author

Honored Contributor

Not much happening the last month:

Quest 2 increased the most, but Rift-S + Rift CV1 + Quest got reduced more than Quest 2 increased. Thus Oculus hmds as a whole did not increase. Pico Neo 3 and Riftcat Vridge showed second and third highest increases. Worst decreases were seen for Rift-S and WMR.

Market shares:

Steam users with hmds were still 2.1%, so at least that number seems stable. As some devs noted, PCVR stands much stronger today than ever before.

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD "Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

Zenbane

Honored Contributor

RuneSR2 wrote:
Quest 2 increased the most, but Rift-S + Rift CV1 + Quest got reduced more than Quest 2 increased. Thus Oculus hmds as a whole did not increase.

Steam users with hmds were still 2.1%, so at least that number seems stable. As some devs noted, PCVR stands much stronger today than ever before.

Quest 2 increased 1% more than the Index, so as a whole Oculus HMD's continue to outpace Valve HMD's on Steam.

Steam alone does not represent the PCVR market in its entirety, so we cannot look at the 2.1% VR HMDs on Steam and make any conclusions about the entire PCVR market. All we can do is make conclusions about Steam's platform. To that end, Steam's PCVR usage is possibly stronger today than ever before, but only because of the large number of Quest 2 users driving Steam PCVR forward.

RuneSR2Author

Honored Contributor

Better late than never - March 2022 results:

Index grew the most followed by the Quest 2. The Rifts took the biggest dives, and Vive got reduced too. Overall the percent of users with VR headsets grew, especially when considering that Steam with about 132 million users has many more users now than for example 1 year ago.

Market shares:

The Other category is becoming quite big, and hides the Rift CV1 and Quest 1. Oculus hmds are still dominating with 2/3 of all hmds.

In short not much happened in March - more or less a boring standstill... More info here:

https://uploadvr.com/valve-index-march-2022-steam-hardware-survey/

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD "Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2Author

Honored Contributor

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