We believe it’s one of the best VR headsets out there, and gamers seem to believe it too – just five months after its launch, the Oculus Quest 2 has soared to the top of the hardware charts and the most widely used virtual one Headset has become a reality among Steam users.
The February 2021 edition of Valve’s regular survey of PC gaming platform users’ hardware shows that the headset built by Facebook now accounts for 22.91% of all virtual reality headsets used to play Steam games .
That’s a 5.52% jump from January’s position, and the Quest 2 beats headsets that have been on sale for much longer, including the Oculus Rift S and top-notch valve index.
In fact, the Oculus family of virtual reality devices, which includes the original Oculus Rift, the original Oculus Quest, and the aging Oculus Rift DK2, are way ahead of other manufacturers’ VR efforts, accounting for 58% of all VR applications Steam off. And that doesn’t take into account the players on Oculus’ own platform, where that percentage will be exponentially higher.
Oculus popularity
What is driving the popularity of the Quest and the entire Oculus family?
For starters, Oculus has probably the best brand awareness when it comes to virtual reality at this point, as it has been in the game from the start of this modern revival of the format. We haven’t gotten to a point where the word “Oculus” is synonymous with VR, as “Nintendo” was on all games in the 1980s, but it does.
Second, price and availability – not only is the Oculus Quest 2 a high quality headset, but you can buy it for an affordable price too. The Valve Index may be our first choice for the best VR experience, but it’s barely in stock and offered at a much higher premium price.
And then there’s the flexibility of the headset – interestingly, the Oculus Quest 2 isn’t even primarily intended for use with PC VR. It is primarily a cordless mobile headset. However, it can easily be plugged into a PC using a single USB-C connection for the best of both worlds in VR.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook (remember, Oculus is owned by Facebook) may have said that Oculus hasn’t gone “mainstream” yet, but it’s definitely heading in that direction. No wonder the company already has an Oculus Quest 3 in its sights.
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