Meta typically doesn’t detail player numbers, or even sales figures for its various Quest headsets, which means we usually have to get creative. Now, the block-slashing rhythm game Beat Saber—the company’s most popular gameappears to have sold nearly 10 million units on Quest alone.

Beat Saber’s ‘Pure’ achievement requires the player to clear any level without any modifiers, which basically anyone can do just by booting up the game for the first time and playing any of the super easy beginner levels.

It’s the best watermark we have to see who bought the game and actually played it for even a few minutes. As highlighted by X user James Kelley, that achievement now accounts for 9.7 million users.

Image courtesy James Kelley

Here’s some back-of-the-napkin math to dig a little deeper: Beat Saber was bundled for a short time with new Quest 2 purchases for a five-month period in 2022, which may account for a good slice of those 9.7 million users on Quest.

Lets assume that five-month period doesn’t account for a 7.35% gap in sales out of the 68 total months of its existence on Quest though, but around triple that just to be on the conservative side.

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Assuming that 20% of players received the game for “free” on Quest, this leaves 7.76 million paid players, which means Beat Saber generated $233 million in revenue on Quest from the base game alone, which is priced at $30 (and never goes on sale). Roughly speaking, this equates to ~$3.42 million revenue per month when calculated over its lifetime on Quest.

Notably, that doesn’t take into account the game’s massive catalogue of paid DLC music packs, which are typically priced at around $15, or $2 per song, or its revenue generated on other platforms, which includes PSVR/PSVR 2, SteamVR headsets, or Meta PC.

The game’s staying power can largely be attributed to two things: it’s an awesome game for VR newcomers, and has also benefitted from a constant flow of recognizable bands included in DLC since it was released. Just last month, Beat Saber released its biggest (and most expensive) music pack yet, the Metallica Music Pack, priced at $20, following a slew of releases last year which included DLC featuring Britney Spears, Daft Punk, as well as hip hop legends 2Pac, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Dr Dre and more.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Brian Elliott Tate

    The number is larger. When the achievement number was 9.3 M on 9/24/24 , Meta used to show the percent of total players who had that achievement also which was only 85%.

  • 石雨濛

    100% speculation piece. Not good journalism at all.

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    No doubt Beat Saber is incredible successful, but selling 7.76mn copies (plus 2mn bundled for free) to a ~25mn headsets install base would be a never heard before market penetration that even extremely popular free games don't reach, let alone any paid for titles. It would boil down to ~39% of all Quest owners having bought Beat Saber (directly or via bundle), while the current king of user engagement, the free on Quest Gorilla Tag, reached only ~33% of the much smaller active Quest user base.

    As I am apparently one of the very few that never really played Beat Saber (tried the demo on Quest 1, got bored after 30sec, quit forever), can somebody else please confirm that

    a) you cannot get the "pure" achievement for finishing any unmodified level just by playing through the free Beat Saber demo level? This would still leave an impressive 9.7mn players, but might significantly reduce the number of actual sales.

    b) that Beat Saber doesn't allow for tracking the progress of multiple players using the same HMD? Because then a household with four people occasionally playing Beat Saber would create four achievements, but only one sale, with similar implications as a).

    • Peter

      Have you ever finished 1 level in the Demo? If yes, you can check in the app if you got the "pure" achievement.

  • Impressive numbers