Almost 5 months after launch, Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 is the most widely used VR headset on Steam.
This emerges from the results of the Steam Hardware Survey from February 2021. In early January, Valve finally started counting Quest 2 headsets in a category of their own. Quest 2 rose from 17.40% of total VR usage in January to 22.91% in February, overtaking the Oculus Rift S, which fell to 21.58%. Valve’s Index headset ranks third at 16% and the original HTC Vive at 13.05%.
Last month marked the first time the percentage of Steam users with a VR headset surged above 2% and in this week’s results, albeit marginally, increased further to 2.21%. Add up every Oculus headset and Facebook now accounts for 58% of the VR devices used on Steam, counting devices up to the Oculus Rift DK2.
Launched in October 2020, Quest 2 is primarily a standalone VR headset that doesn’t require a PC connection to run. By connecting the headset to a PC with a wired USB connection or by setting up a wireless connection via Virtual Desktop (this can now be done in the native Oculus Store app), the device can access SteamVR content. The $ 299 starting price and spec sheet of the headset, which can even be compared to some of the more advanced (and much more expensive) PC VR headsets, undoubtedly helped it take off so quickly.
As always, remember that the Steam Hardware Survey is offered to a random sample of the Steam user base each month. If they accept, their PC specs will be uploaded along with the SteamVR log of all headsets connected in the past month. So it’s not a definitive indicator of where PC VR market share is, but given that Facebook, HTC, and Valve have never shared solid sales stats for their headsets, it’s the best we have.
With no major new PC VR headsets slated to be released anytime soon, Quest’s lead is likely to grow in the months ahead.
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