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A stage presentation for the first Quest headset in 2018. Photo: Bloomberg.

Meta’s New VR Content Stats; HoloLens Turmoil; Behind a VR MMO Launch

By  |  Feb. 3, 2022 11:04 AM PST
Photo: A stage presentation for the first Quest headset in 2018. Photo: Bloomberg.

Meta Platforms, remaining tight-lipped about Quest unit sales during its fourth quarter earnings report, instead dangled a juicy datapoint about VR software sales. More than $1 billion has been spent in the Quest Store since its launch in 2019. While this is promising news for developers who’ve made it on the Quest Store, the more you try to parse these numbers the clearer it is that Meta still has a long way to go toward a sustainable VR content business.

In Meta’s favor, we already know that its rhythm game Beat Saber accounts for a huge chunk of that $1 billion—in October, it announced that the game had surpassed $100 million in revenue on Quest alone. According to Meta’s director of content ecosystem Chris Pruett, seven other VR titles have now brought in over $20 million in revenue through Quest, with over 120 making revenue in the millions. But the way that spending breaks down across Quest users matters.

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Photos via Goldman Sachs, Elliott Management, Bloomberg, the Berkeley Forum, JPMorgan Chase, Sequoia, UC Berkeley and YouTube.
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