Contrary to Predictions, PC VR is Not Only Surviving—It’s Thriving

The VR landscape has undergone some remarkable changes over the last five years, with standalone headsets taking off and new players like Apple entering the scene, with Google rumored to follow soon. Yet, amidst all these advancements, the PC VR platform has continued to grow, albeit at a gradual pace.

Looking back on everything that’s happened in VR since 2018, it’s almost unbelievable. If someone had told me in early 2020 what was coming, I would have been skeptical. Imagine hearing that Facebook would drop its iconic name, dissolve the ‘Oculus’ brand, and yet, despite all of this, transform its standalone Quest headset into the leader of the VR market under the Meta brand.

And then, picture being told that Apple would boldly jump into the VR market with its own headset, priced at a staggering $3,500! Following closely, Google would introduce a comprehensive Android XR operating system to support a flagship headset made by Samsung. Even Microsoft, which decided to discontinue its Windows MR platform and shift away from HoloLens, becomes more plausible in retrospect.

Amidst these seismic shifts, the original VR platform—PC VR—has endured and even thrived.

The Growth of Monthly-Connected Headsets on Steam Over the Last Five Years

Every month, Valve gathers data from Steam users to understand the kinds of hardware and software the community is using, tracking changes over time, including VR headset usage. These monthly stats detail the number of headsets connected to Steam, referred to as ‘monthly-connected headsets,’ providing a rough gauge of active VR users on the platform. It’s worth noting, however, that these figures only cover how many headsets were connected, not how many were actively in use.

While Valve’s data offers insights into which headsets dominate Steam, interpreting trends can be tricky since the data is presented as percentages of Steam’s audience—a constantly shifting and not directly stated figure.

If you solely focus on the percentage of VR users on Steam, you might think the sector is shrinking. But this ignores the substantial growth in Steam’s user base over these years—almost doubling in fact.

To make sense of this, Road to VR maintains a model that leverages historical survey data alongside official data from Valve, aiming to estimate the actual count—rather than just the percentage—of headsets being utilized on Steam.

Through this model, it becomes clear that the raw number of VR headsets connected to Steam is steadily increasing over time.

In essence, while the growth rate of Steam as a whole outstrips that of SteamVR users when viewed proportionally, the absolute number of VR users is consistently rising. From a developer’s viewpoint, this translates to an expanding potential customer base, even if the proportion of Steam users with VR headsets has diminished.

This gradual rise presumably wouldn’t exist if Valve hadn’t established SteamVR as an open platform accessible to any headset manufacturer. Currently, at least 24 different headset models are used on the platform monthly, highlighting SteamVR as the most expansive and varied PC VR ecosystem.

Surely, Meta also deserves credit for PC VR’s continued growth. The affordability and widespread availability of Quest headsets have ushered many newcomers into VR, some of whom experiment with PC VR. Today, Meta accounts for a significant 70% of monthly-connected headsets on Steam.

As we ponder what the next five years hold for PC VR, there’s no doubt it will be an exciting journey. Let’s catch up in 2030 and see how far we’ve come!