What is the performance of Meta Quest during the Christmas season? I have gathered initial online indicators for evaluation.
Will Meta Quest 2 continue to be popular in the holiday season of 2023, or will its sales decline?
Before Christmas, the price of Quest 2 was lowered to $250, much to the delight of enthusiasts. The release of Quest 3 in October, priced at double the cost, also brought joy to fans.
In November, Amazon sales figures suggested that Quest 2 was selling about twice as well as Quest 3 – a respectable ratio given the price difference. During the UK’s Black Friday, VR had its strongest revenue week yet. By the way, I have gathered various additional metrics that pertain to the success of sales during the Christmas season.
The app is currently the most popular and does not require payment on the App Store in the United States.
Like in previous years, the iOS application Meta Quest achieved the highest number of downloads among free apps in the App Store during the Christmas season and maintained its position for several days. It is necessary to install the Meta Quest app on the smartphone to utilize the Quest.
Wishing everyone another merry VR funeral! pic.twitter.com/X0HLEQPvVn
— Luna (@Lunayian) December 25, 2023
The VR travel app has experienced a significant surge in new users.
Developer Akin Bilgic tweeted that Brink Traveler has experienced a significant increase in new daily users since the release of Meta Quest 3. This success was even greater during the Christmas season, surpassing the user spike from the previous year.
Fresh stats for the #VR debates!
With the #MetaQuest3 launch, @BrinkXR saw a sustained ~4x increase in daily new users overnight.
Christmas day brought a ~10x spike on top of that new baseline, which was much bigger than last Christmas while also having a bigger lead-up.🎄(1/3) pic.twitter.com/16WYnqwHQ7
— Akin Bilgic | BRINK Traveler (@AkinBilgic) December 27, 2023
Gorilla Tag breaks user record
During Christmas, the VR game that is currently highly popular had over 90,000 players online simultaneously, which is 2.5 times higher than its previous count. It is uncertain whether this data includes the PC VR edition. Nevertheless, the majority of players are likely using Meta Quest.
The Christmas effect has spiked Gorilla Tag concurrent players to more than 2.5x pic.twitter.com/en3ot5Qk4R
— Ben Lang (@benz145) December 27, 2023
SteamVR: Meta Quest 3 breaks into the PC VR headset charts
In December 2023, Meta Quest 3 ranked as the fourth most popular SteamVR headset, closely trailing the Oculus Rift S. Its market share witnessed a growth of 5% in November and an additional 4% in December. It’s worth noting that the SteamVR statistics solely encompass headsets utilized with Steam on a PC, representing only a fraction of the total number of headsets available in the market.
The Quest 3 exclusive app has a minimum of 400,000 users.
Twitter user JustDaven shared a screenshot revealing that over 400,000 users have attempted Meta’s mixed reality demo, First Encounters. The app does not start on its own and the actual number of users could potentially be greater depending on the number of individuals who tried the app.
Assuming like 90% of Quest 3 owners have played First Encounters, could be close to 450k Quest 3's total out in the wild / consumer market already
If its more like 50% have tried this (the only Quest 3 exclusive) then Quest 3 might be near 1m units already? pic.twitter.com/H6JKBuJVui
— JustDaven (@JayHadHope) January 2, 2024
Further clues
The number of subscribers in the subreddits /oculus and /oculusquest also experienced a rise during Christmas, although it was slightly lower compared to previous years.
Meta’s next quarterly report, expected in late January or early February, will provide a more concrete assessment of sales success compared to previous years as Meta breaks out Meta Reality Labs revenue for every quarter.
