Produced | 93913 Media Center
Written | Roger
Edited | William
The first quarter of 2022 is over, and the Steam Hardware and Software Survey serves as a "barometer" of the PC VR market, which roughly reflects the changing state of the entire market. We've compiled a summary of the Steam hardware and software survey data for January-March 2022, and let's take a look at what new changes have taken place in the VR hardware and software of the Steam platform after a whole quarter!
1． Hardware data
From the overall data, the proportion of Steam platform VR users has steadily increased in Q1 2022, from 1.93% to 2.13%. At the same time, according to the data released by Steam, the average monthly active users in 2021 are about 132 million, which also means that according to the data of the previous year, the Number of Steam VR users reached about 2.8 million in March, an increase of about 264,000 compared with the end of 2021 (Note: The number of active users in the following articles is estimated according to this data).
Meta
▲Meta Quest 2
In terms of specific brands, meta(formerly Oculus) 's Quest 2 user ratio further increased, from 39.62% to 47.35%, up 7.73%, making it the largest proportion of VR hardware for the Steam platform.
In addition, the proportion of Meta's other three VR hardware - Rift, Rift S and Quest - has declined, rift accounted for 1.04% to 3.80%, Rift S fell 3.17% to 11.60%, and Quest fell by 0.5% to 3.85%.
Rift, Rift S and Quest not only have the proportion of platforms declined, but also the number of active users, while the proportion of Quest 2 and the number of active users have ushered in a substantial increase, which proves the market dominance of Quest 2.
From the overall proportion, the market share of Meta's 4 products has risen from 63.58% to 66.6%, and the share has reached 2/3, which is in an absolute dominant position. From the perspective of the number of active users, by the end of March 2022, the number of active users of the Steam platform Meta VR hardware increased by about 252,400 compared with the end of 2021, with a quarterly growth rate of 15.6%, and the growth rate is still considerable.
Valve Index
▲ Valve Index kit
V's self-developed Valve Index VR kit has been listed in the top 10 of the Steam sales weekly list for many years, and in terms of Q1 2022, although the proportion has decreased slightly, from 15.79% to 15.09%, the number of active users has increased by about 22,000, with a quarterly growth rate of about 5.5%.
Considering that the Valve Index is much higher than the Quest 2 (headset + controller + positioner costs $999), this is already a very good result. It is reported that the V Society is already developing the successor product of Valve Index, and according to the quality of Index, the new product is very worth looking forward to.
HTC Vive
▲HTC Vive Pro 2
HTC has launched a number of products for the PC VR market, but compared with the consumer market, HTC is more focused on the industry application market. In the first quarter of 2022, HTC's products included in the Steam Hardware Survey included HTC Vive, HTC Vive Pro, HTC Vive Pro 2, HTC Vive Cosmos, and HTC Vive Elite.
Overall, the proportion of active USERS of VR hardware under HTC in Q1 2022 fell from 12.48% to 10.72%, of which HTC Vive fell from 8.26% to 7.00%, HTC Vive Pro fell from 1.94% to 1.55%, HTC Vive Cosmos fell from 1.82% to 1.62%, HTC Vive Pro 2 rose from 0.45% to 0.55%, HTC Vive Elite rose from 0.01% Down to fall out of the list.
In terms of the number of active users, the HTC Vive Pro 2 is the only product that has risen in the list. HTC Vive Pro 2 is hTC's new PC VR headset released on May 12 last year, focusing on the high-end market, the biggest highlight is its 5K class (binocular resolution 4896 x 2448) hd screen, which is a rare high-resolution product in the current PC VR market.
Pico
▲Pico Neo 3
Pico Neo 3 is a VR all-in-one product released by Pico in May 2021, benchmarking Quest 2, which can also provide streaming services for PC VR players. In Q1 2022, among the active VR users on the Steam platform, the proportion of Pico Neo 3 users increased from 0.30% to 0.59%, almost doubling, which is closely related to Pico's investment in product promotion after being acquired by ByteDance, and can also partially reflect the current overall sales growth of Pico Neo 3.
Pico's other product, Pico Neo 2, performed essentially flat during the quarter, falling from 0.06% to about 0.05%, a relatively niche product.
Small pie
▲ The Pimax Reality 12K QLED that has not yet been released
Xiaopai's PC VR headset is mainly a high-definition display. At present, in the Steam hardware survey, the products on the list include Pimax 8K, Pimax 5K Plus and Pimax Artisan. Overall, the share of the Xiaopai brand fell from 0.38% to 0.28%, of which the Pimax 8K fell from 0.23% to 0.18%, the Pimax 5K Plus fell from 0.12% to 0.07%, and the Pimax Artisan remained unchanged at 0.03%.
Windows MR headset
▲HP Reverb G2
Among the Windows MR headsets currently on sale in the Microsoft Marketplace, HP is the only brand other than HTC, which released the HP Reverb G2 flagship PC VR headset developed in collaboration with Valve in 2020. Previously, brands such as Samsung and Acer have also sold Windows MR headsets.
From the perspective of the proportion of Steam active VR users, Windows MR still occupies a large volume, but it is declining, and Q1 in 2022 has dropped from 5.69% to 4.86%.
summary
At present, the VR hardware market pattern of the Steam platform is relatively clear, the total number of users is growing steadily, Meta occupies a dominant position in the market, and the share is still growing, and the current share is far more than the sum of other competitors. The number of users of new products such as Meta Quest 2, Valve Index, HTC Vive Pro 2, Pico Neo 3 and others is still growing, while the number of users of some older products is showing a downward trend, which may mean that some older PC VR users have begun to upgrade their devices.
Among them, such as Quest 2, Pico Neo 3 such as pc VR streaming all-in-one machine is very popular with consumers, in addition, there are also a group of consumers will choose similar to Valve Index, HTC Vive Pro 2 compared to the original PC VR headset such as Rift and HTC Vive in terms of resolution upgrade of larger hardware, the pursuit of a more extreme experience, but the total number is more limited.
With the release of high-resolution new products such as PSVR 2, Apple MR All-in-One, Xiaopai Pimax Reality 12K QLED, arpara 5K VR headset, etc., users of the PC VR platform will also usher in more choices, and perhaps we will be able to see some fresh faces on the VR list of Steam hardware surveys.
2． Software data
According to the search results of the Steam App Store, as of March 31, 2022, the total number of VR-enabled games and applications that the Steam platform can search for is 5942, of which between January and March 2022, the total number of new VR games and applications on the Steam platform is 203 (Note: This time is the listing time displayed by Steam, not the game release time).
Of the 203 new games and apps, the total number of reviews exceeding 100 are: Townsmen VR, Hyperbolica, Warhammer 40K: Battle Sister, Buccaneers! Zenith: The Last City, Wanderer, Hitman 3, Garden of the Sea, Climbey, except for the mixed reviews of Hitman 3, are all positive reviews.
Sorting the popularity of these new games by the number of reviews, the highest is Zenith: The Last City, with 2679 reviews, followed by Killer 3 with 2459 reviews, Clembey with 1028 reviews, Hyperbolica 614 reviews, Garden of the Sea 369 reviews, Wanderer 315 reviews, townsmen VR 218 reviews, Warhammer 40K: Battle Sister 128 reviews, Buccaneers! 113 comments.
According to a Survey Discoverability study of Steam review data in August 2020, the median ratio of the number of users who bought a game to the number of users who commented was 38 at the time, and the average was 41. Based on this data, the highest-rated Zenith: The Last City and Killer 3 both sold nearly 100,000 copies. For comparison, the VR FPS blockbuster After The Fall, released in December 2021, had 1,204 reviews.