At Connect 2022 this month, Meta announced the Quest content store has surpassed $1.5 billion in purchased VR content since its launch in 2019, representing continued but decelerating growth likely due mostly to market seasonality.

Update (October 18th, 2022): Article updated with the latest Quest platform revenue milestone from Meta of $1.5 billion. The article previously covered the $1 billion milestone.

Though Meta has still yet to share official unit sales for its Quest headsets, at Connect 2022 this month the company confirmed that the Quest store has surpassed $1.5 billion in purchased software since the platform launched in 2019.

This milestone shows the Quest platform continuing to grow in revenue; the average monthly store revenue has increased from $50.6 million to nearly $60 million since the last milestone the company shared in February 2022.

Though the platform continues to grow, the growth itself has decelerated somewhat. This, however, is to be expected considering the seasonality of the gaming industry which tends to ramp up considerably in Q4 (and this figure from Meta is only at the very beginning of Q4).

We’ll need to see how much activity the Quest store earns over the course of Q4 and the holidays before we can be certain that this apparent deceleration is seasonal or a more broad effect. Surely the recent price hike of Quest 2 is a notable variable that needs to be considered.

Meta hasn’t offered any detail breaking down the $1.5 billion figure, but we take it that it includes games, apps, DLC, and subscriptions sold through both the official Quest store and App Lab, and may also include cross-buy titles that were purchased to be played on the Oculus PC platform.

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While Meta has never officially confirmed the number of headsets it has sold, Qualcomm (a key component supplier for the headset) estimated the figure to be in the 10 million unit range at the end of 2021.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • If they haven’t said 10M units sold, it means that they are not there yet

    • Blaexe

      I think that magical threshold of 10m units sold is a misunderstanding in general. When Zuckerberg mentioned that at Connect, he meant 10m active users.

      Obviously sold units that are not getting used are not worth anything. They’ll probably have to sell far more than 10m units to get 10m monthly active users.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      We are somewhat fixated on that 10mn units number, as Zuckerberg declared it the minimum number of users for a self sustaining platform, but I’m not sure they would announce reaching it. For one he was referring to people being active and and purchasing on the platform, not units sold. With estimates on active users it looks like retention rate on Quest might still be low, with only about 1/3 of all users still active after a few months, so even 10mn units sold could mean only 3.3mn active users, still far from what he suggested as required.

      They have avoided giving absolute numbers so far, most likely to somewhat hide how little money they actually make back from their VR investments. With USD 850mn store revenue since the Quest 2 launch and 30% of that going to Meta, 10mn units sold would mean USD 85 software sales for every heavily subsidized USD 300+ Quest, USD 25.5 would have went to Meta. Less when you include Quest 1. These numbers are pretty bad, esp. compared to other consoles like Playstation or Switch, so they may prefer to stick to their policy of minimal disclosure.

    • namekuseijin

      if we look at amazon videogame best sellers, Quest 2 has been in the top positions since at least october last year, it’s alone there as hardware – atop it only cards, well below you see switch and down there an xbox series S. neither PS5 or xbox series X are to be found.

      Number of ratings users gave to Quest 2 there is more than 20k, more than double than that of series S, which launched roughly around the same time and a bit cheaper but is not a true nextgen console.

      I’d say Quest 2 is around the 10 million mark already. Popular games like Pop1, Onward, Blade and Sorcery and of course Beat Saber all have above 10k ratings in the Quest store. I remember a time when I checked RE7 on PS4 store and it was around 8k ratings, long after launch.

      so, summing up, I think it’s a VR console getting indeed console-like player engagement. I can see it eventually reaching 30 million or so, a true hallmark in stark contrast for “socially-depriving, gimmicky VR” days of old… psvr2 will still be sold as a (expensive) accessory for PS5, may well not get such traction

      that of course, if Meta stock doesn’t keep falling and Zuck just closes or sell the thing and go live a luxury life in his real metamansion

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        I’d say Quest 2 is around the 10 million mark already.

        I’d actually agree, but your argument isn’t one. Quest 2 selling more often/ranking higher on Amazon than two consoles that are so supply constrained that they are always sold out isn’t a sign that the Quest is more popular, quite the opposite. It never sells out, not even during its main sales period around Christmas. If you want a comparison how popular these devices are, compare the prices of sold units on ebay. New 128GB Quest 2 sell for USD 250, used 64GB models for USD 220 and less. PS5 usually sell for USD 650-700.

        There is some speculation that one of the reasons why Quest 2 was such a popular present in Q4 2021 (Black Friday plus Christmas) was simply that the PS5 or Xbox Series X that people actually wanted were unavailable, and people still wanted to give/receive gaming tech as presents. Xbox Series S seems to be much easier to get, but also less popular due to the weaker 4TFLOPS GPU compared to the 12TFLOPS in Series X.

        And the Switch just overtook the Wii as the most popular Nintendo console ever, with 103.5mn Switch vs. 101.5mn Wii. Nintendo sold 10.67mn Switch in Q3 2021 alone, while Sony only sold 3.9mn PS5, because that was all they could produce. I’d be surprised if Meta sold 1mn Quest 2 in Q3 2021, as this was during their summer slump and the quarter with the recall and a one month sales stop. Sales only picked up in Q4 with the release of RE4 and Blade & Sorcery plus the huge wave of Quest 2 as Christmas presents. Comparing ratings on the app stores is difficult, but according to Wikipedia RE7 passed the 10mn sold units mark in October 2021, so it is pretty safe to assume it sold more than any Quest game by a large margin.

        so, summing up, I think it’s a VR console getting indeed console-like player engagement.

        Not really, and not for a while. This article is about software sales. The Quest store generated USD 850mn in the fiscal year 2021. That is about 57mn titles@USD 15 or 42.5mn@USD 20 assumed average price, less if a lot of it was (Beat Saber etc.) DLC. Sony sold 294mn games (retail plus Playstation store with 5000+ titles) during the same time generating an estimated USD 25.5bn (~40% DLC/micro-transactions), 30 times what Meta made. Sony did this despite the PS4 being at the end of its life cycle and not being able to produce anywhere near enough PS5. If Sony could match the demand for PS5 in the same way that Meta can match the demand for Quest 2, their distance would be even larger.

    • JonnyBoy

      They sold 8.7M units in 2021. 14.8M Units as of may 2022. Q1-22 Quest 2 revenue was up 242% yoy. Quest 2 is on it’s way to becoming mainstream.

  • Rogue Transfer

    When factoring significant Portal & less so Ray Ban glasses sales revenue(Portal went up 10x in sales early last year due to the pandemic driving sales), plus accessories off the released revenue figures here, we can see that the Qualcomm claims of 10 million(that they later retracted saying it was third-party analyst guesses) were wild of the mark. The actual Quest 2 units sold is significantly less.

    There’s no avoiding that fact now. The question remains though, by how much, that’s much more difficult to pin down. It could be a lot less or a few million less. It’d be interesting to dive into that deeper, looking into past reports from Facebook on Portal’s dramatic increased success last year. And whether that, was sustained or not and how well did Ray Ban glasses do, plus accessories(Quest elite straps, facial pad packs, etc.) and any other aspects that are included in Reality Labs revenue figures. I’m sure there are other things missed that would reduce the numbers a bit more too, or perhaps by a fair amount. Hard to tell.

    • Blaexe

      Keep in mind Meta makes significantly less revenue per unit than the $299 or $399 retail price (could be half of that, who knows?) so there’s really no way to gauge the number of units sold.

  • namekuseijin

    fun fact about those pictures: Quest is actually getting popular among gamers, not the fitness casual crowds they were expecting. Go look at user ratings for fitness apps and top spot games… it’s always shooters, action games at the top, not minigames and fitness apps (aside from the popular box-chopping sure)

    • Mr.Philgood

      Games In the most popular games sections that are not shooters or action: Gym Class, Beat Saber, Fit XR, Holofit, Rec Room, VRChat, Echo VR, Poker Stars, Bait, Eleven Table Tennis, Gravity Sketch, Tripp, WIN, Reality, Kingspray Graffiti, VZfit, MLB VR, Liminal, Walkabout Minigolf, Golf+, Richies Plank Experience, Vacation Simulator, A Town Ship Tale, Totally Baseball, Hand Physics Lab. There are way more games popular than action and shooters in most popular.

      • Octogod

        Most popular (often) means free.

        Free means downloaded by children or people looking for something they wouldn’t pay for.

        This is why they can be both downloaded often and disliked just as often.

        • Mr.Philgood

          Most popular is not about downloads, it’s about games/apps played and used the most. If you hate a game or app, why should you continue using it?

  • kool

    I think the quest 2 might have had its sales peak. It needs to release as much software as it can this year. Cambria will segment the market if it has exclusive games and itll be hard to justify devs the higher cost of the smaller market. I hope cambria brings some kind of vr cloud tech paving the way for aaa mobile vr gaming. That way all future headsets will always be apart of the same ecosystem and wont have to rebuild the userbase every generation.

    • QuestPRO will have zero exclusive games …. lol

      • kool

        Quest games dont look bad to me. Im waiting on the psvr2 personally and wanted to see how far they can push VR.

      • kool

        I think the reason most games look basic in VR is because of time and budget. I think red matter 2 shows how games can be highly optimized and look good. This had to happen to learn what works and what doesn’t. It also creates a bar and a blueprint for better games in VR. Some is taking the lessons learned this gen and we should see a flood of high end aa games at quest 3 launch. Aaa games will have to come from streaming on a standalone and i think meta is waiting for sony to stimulate that market before even worrying about it. But as long as the quest can squeeze more and more out of the soc itll keep growing the VR market, which is some pretty good synergy until the market matures.

  • Weird how little they’ve made seeing that Rec Room has gotten a valuation of that much ages ago

    • NL_VR

      Meta dont get anything from RecRoom, it’s a free app RecRoom takes it all.

      • ViRGiN

        Didn’t Rec Room developer counter claimed it and said they do share 30% of IAP?

        • Interesting, didn’t know that ….

    • Mr.Philgood

      But Rec Room is not only available in VR, and the smartphone game market is huge

  • ViRGiN

    meanwhile at steam vr; the player count is only going down.

    and in other news – onward just announced shut down of servers for 1.7 version, the pre-quest ‘pro’ version of the game that ‘didn’t get dumbed down to run on quest’, which is still 100x worse than CS 1.6. they are also switching to cross-buy solution, claiming FINALLY wireless streaming is very good. LOL.

    they just got shat on by Contractors surpassing sales steadily for the past couple of months.
    obviously the game itself does not receive itself any real updates, just claims of big things coming in the future.

    oh and as always, uploadvr is not going to cover contractors, claiming they do not have time, when they do have time to cover every beat saber DLC lol. they are just advertising-money hungry, looking for new writers, not offering anything in return.

  • kool

    But its took 10 billion to get this far. Meta has to do something to stop them bleeding ads, subs or both will be a big part of the market place. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing I just wonder whats bumping around in the wooden horse.

  • ViRGiN

    uploadvr is still refusing to cover the scam of palmer luckey, you know, the ready rift one, the free audio kit offered by palmer himself to fix your audio on CV1. he wanted to get everyone back to metaverse as soon as possible. collected thousands of user data… and that’s all! NOT A SINGLE NEWS PAGE covered anything afterwards. everyone was so happy to cover good news, nobody wants to do follow up. ESPECIALLY uploadvr. uploadvr got paid millions over the years to keep uploadvr afloat. and they are still fully silly ass of excuses.

    they never have time to review contractors huge updates of this year, but they did not blink twice to accept paid advertising.
    hillarious wannabe influencers.

    onward is for people with no self respect. and that mindset of ‘its tactical mil sim, because you die from two bullets, that’s as realistic as it can get’

  • ViRGiN

    ACHTUNG! FIRE IN THE HOLE!

    ” PCVR IS THE FUTURE ! ”
    BOOM!

  • ApocalypseShadow

    Vague and rumored sales numbers of the headset because there hasn’t been any announcement ever. Just gamers guessing. Hype of revenue without context on if they are in the red or in the black overall with Quest and a breakdown of where the sales are. No huge game announcements to coincide with their connect 2022 or any new information on previous announced games like GTA or Creed. Sounds like hype to me.

    Game industry biz just released a story on reduced use of the headset and employees who were also not using the headset. Because we do know Facebook was going to reimburse employees in subsidies who purchased it making it free just to boost the numbers.

    Can we get some real numbers and some real context? Inquiring minds would like to know.

  • ViRGiN

    it’s because they have to support quest 1 (due to their own choice) – onward extremists

    meanwhile, the very same mods for contractors runs pretty flawlessly on quest 1 lol

  • ViRGiN

    What are you talking about? Even the newest XR2 is pale in comparison to RTX 4090 which gets STABLE 45 frames in vr ms flight lol.
    RTX 5090 will solve all PCVR issues. And if it won’t, 6090 surely will. Or maybe two of them.

  • NL_VR

    Yet you certainly will be able to use Quest 3 for PCVR.
    That’s the power of PC no matter what console kids from walled gardens say.

    • ViRGiN

      You can also play Nintendo 64 games on your smartwatch.
      That’s the power of Nintendo 64.
      And mobile power. And talented developers.
      Yet talented developers turned their back on PCVR.

      Or maybe there are at least 4 big games announced for PCVR that I do not know about? You know, something huge and awesome to play every quarter of the year?

      • NL_VR

        Now you mixed up.
        It’s the power of that smart watch that you can play N64 on your watch.
        So you.contiune super mario 64 on your smartwatch and I continue enjoy everything PC has to offer.

        • VR

          Well said.

          Needless to say, PCVR is the superior VR platform.

          PCVR is the superset of other VR platforms.

  • NL_VR

    Yet you mostly seems to be one of the most negative users on these boards towards VR and vr-games.

    • That’s what people infuriatingly just don’t seem to understand:
      telling the truth means exactly that, telling. the. truth.
      If something’s good, say so.
      If something’s eh …. alright I guess, say so.
      If something’s hot garbage, say so.
      Unfortunately right now, VR is innundated with shitty games.
      So in telling the truth about that sad cirumstance, you’re “being negative”.
      Consequently, it mistakenly *appears* as though you hate everything out there.
      Understand now …?

      • NL_VR

        So you mean you are not negative?
        Sorry man i just think maybe VR is not for you

  • ViRGiN

    I’m pretty sure we are both talking about lack of coverage on sites like this and UploadVR. Yes, the game was #4 top seller on Quest store for a number of days, usually oscillates around number #6 and went to #8 after Bonelab. Onward is further behind.

    How much the game grew from becoming nearly extinct as PC exclusive, to gaining little popularity after Quest launch, to surpassing both Pavlov and Onward cominbed is a news on it’s own. And yet UVR have done exactly zero coverage – the only articles were paid advertisments, with no word from these “journalists” of their own. Supposedly due to lack of time, and then you get a bunch of Beat Saber DLC articles, and obsolete news about SteamVR games that had 9 players concurrent players record receiving a Quest port news.

    The public knowledge dominance of onward and pavlov extremists also did it’s disservice. For months those fanboys look at steam numbers and claim the game is dead, when in reality, it increased player base at least 15x.

    • Boy you aren’t kiddin’ ….
      They’ll do a ten thousand word article on a
      new song being added as if were “HALF-LIFE: Alyx II”. lol

  • ViRGiN

    and how does existence of coverage on youtube says anything?
    this is a platform where you have everything from cat videos to how to make a salad to DIY bunk bed.

  • Honestly speaking, that’s all I hear: how great “Onward” is.
    My point is that that simply isn’t true.

    • NL_VR

      as i said you must be stuck in some feed bubble then, i havent heard anyone beeing positive against Onward.
      Contractors seems to be the game get most attention.

  • wheeler

    I think coverage of market stats from VR’s #1 underwriter (valuable stats nonetheless, but there’s still a clear conflict of interest in how they portray things) should be balanced with coverage of 3rd party stats. Stats from developers hitched to this industry aren’t much better, i.e. trying to claim someone that used their headset at least once during a particular month immediately following a big holidays sales period is an “active user”.

    Naturally I don’t think it should be the goal of VR journalists to boost the industry but rather to paint an accurate picture of it.

    For example the latest Piper Sandler survey (~14,500 participants) has 26% of teens owning a VR headset but a whopping 86% of them using their headset on a monthly basis or less (and about half of that 86% uses their headset less frequently or just not at all). And the percentage of users that fall into the “infrequent/inactive user” camp has been increasing–it was 82% in the Spring but now it’s 86%. Nearly 90% of these surveyed teens have iPhones and are in Apple’s ecosystem so we can’t just keep lazily applying the “they’re just GearVRs / Daydreams” excuse (not to mention, as teens in 2022 many are just too young for GearVR/Daydream).

    In other words, millions of headsets have been sold and people may buy a few games (the New World Notes blog estimates 2 to 3 game sales per user based on the reported figures) but the curse of VR persists: poor usage and retention.

    • poltevo

      Retention is a really hard problem to solve for VR. Consider that VR competes directly with other much more established entertainment forms, particularly flat games. I think its a long road to going mainstream and just selling lots of headsets doesn’t cut it. For comparison, what is the active user stats for Switch, PS and Xbox?

      • wheeler

        We’re comparing mediums here instead of individual platforms, so usage frequency and retention should be based on the medium as a whole. But the aforementioned survey does not track the same usage frequency stats for flat gaming. I imagine this is because nearly all teens play video games every day. E.g. Mott Poll has 86% of all teens playing games every day, with 54% playing >3 hours a day. With stats like that I can see why the aforementioned survey doesn’t bother measuring it. But VR on the other hand is a very different story.

  • Tommy

    I own several Quests and have to say I’m still not a big fan. I appreciate how many people it has brought into VR and the massive R&D they’ve done but I want better games and better graphics.
    I mainly use my Quest 2 for PCVR and a very select few native games but the small FOV and comfort level just doesn’t do it for me. I’ll be skipping the Quest 3 and any other standalones unless a miracle upgrade happens.

    • Max-Dmg

      A larger FOV would be so nice. I use it mainly for PCVR also as the reolution is nice. I wish they would make a headset cheap that has large FOV and high res for PCVR only.

      • Tommy

        Amen, brotha!

        • Max-Dmg

          And VR porn is so much better on high resolution. Although I’m running out of socks.

          • Tommy

            Lol
            Well, Xmas is around the corner. You can ask Santa for a higher resolution HMD and a package of Fruit of the Loom socks

          • Max-Dmg

            And I wont have to peek in my neighbours windows any more.

  • sfmike

    I’m sure he has more than one or he would lose al billionaire cred.

  • JakeDunnegan

    Meta is finally realizing they can make more money when they put apps on sale.

    It baffled me when the only times they would have sales were at Christmas.

    Also, their finally relenting on things like being using your own handle (instead of a facebook account). I know in my own case, when they decided to change that account naming thing (and having actual sales), I started opening my wallet more. I regularly get discount codes from Meta now…basically like 1 or more a month, when I used to perhaps get 1 or so per year, which I quickly ignored, due to the invasive nature of Facebook.

    And whoah, was this a necro post. Weird posts below where folks are answering people from nine months earlier..

  • Max-Dmg

    And there still is not a way to remove uninstalled apps.My library is filled with so much uninstalled sh*te. Stupid workaround to use a filter…
    Or, does anyone know a way???

  • Ad

    How much revenue per unit is this? Isn’t it going down?