Driven largely by the influx of new Quest 2 users, VR headsets on Steam easily hit a new high, with an estimated 3.4 million headset devices connected each month.
According to Valve's latest data, in January 2022, VR headsets on Steam reached 2.14% of total Steam players, up 0.21 percentage points from the previous month (1.93%). While this percentage is lower than the record of 2.31% set in May 2021, it is estimated that the number of actual VR headsets has reached a significant new level.
The top three SteamVR active devices in January were: Oculus Quest 2 (46.02%), Valve Index HMD (14.36%), and Oculus Rift S (13.10%). Quest 2 is undoubtedly the most important driver of the growth of VR headsets connected every month on Steam in January. Apparently spurred on by the 2021 holiday season, quest 2 reached an all-time high of 46.02% (+6.40%), the largest single-month increase ever.
Less popular headsets such as the original HTC Vive lost less share at 7.31% (-0.95%), and Windows VR headsets lost less share at 4.99% (-0.70%). This suggests that many Rift S and Valve Index users purchased quest 2 during the 2021 holiday season, with other models fluctuating less than 1%.
However, while the share of Rift S, Index, HTC Vive, and Windows VR has declined, the number of all these headsets is actually increasing as it grows in size enough to make up for the loss of share.
From a vendor perspective, Meta's steady growth in January was helped by Quest 2 (although quest 1 and Rift S share has declined), with the company's head appearance accounting for 67.25% (+3.67%) of monthly connected VR headsets.