The standalone VR market is continuing to grow, and with it, we’re increasingly seeing platform competition for quality content. Pico made its biggest push into consumer VR so far with the launch of the Pico 4 last year, and the company has been gaining ground on getting top VR content onto its store.

Update – August 14th, 2023

  • Two more top apps joined the Pico store since our last check
    • The Last Clockwinder (top rated list)
    • Vacation Simulator (most rated list)

Top Quest Apps Showing up on Pico 4

Looking at the 20 best-rated apps on the Quest store (data as of April 2023), to date 75% of the list is available on Pico’s standalone headset:

Title Pico 4 Quest 2
Moss: Book II ✔ ✔
The Room VR: A Dark Matter ✔ ✔
Puzzling Places ✔ ✔
Walkabout Mini Golf ✔ ✔
I Expect You To Die 2 ✖ ✔
Breachers ✔ ✔
COMPOUND ✖ ✔
Vermillion ✔ ✔
Swarm ✔ ✔
DYSCHRONIA: Chronos Alternate ✖ ✔
PatchWorld – Make Music Worlds ✖ ✔
I Expect You To Die ✖ ✔
Moss ✔ ✔
Red Matter 2 ✔ ✔
ARK and ADE ✔ ✔
Ragnarock ✔ ✔
Cubism ✔ ✔
Ancient Dungeon ✔ ✔
Into the Radius ✔ ✔
The Last Clockwinder ✔ ✔

Another way of looking at Pico’s content traction is by the 20 most-rated apps on the Quest store. Breaking it down that way (data as of April 2023), 55% of the list is now available on Pico.

Title Pico 4 Quest 2
Beat Saber ✖ ✔
Blade & Sorcery: Nomad ✔ ✔
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners ✔ ✔
SUPERHOT VR ✔ ✔
GOLF+ ✖ ✔
BONELAB ✖ ✔
Vader Immortal: Episode I ✖ ✔
Onward ✖ ✔
Job Simulator ✔ ✔
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted ✖ ✔
Resident Evil 4 ✖ ✔
The Thrill of the Fight ✖ ✔
Pistol Whip ✔ ✔
Eleven Table Tennis ✔ ✔
GORN ✔ ✔
Virtual Desktop ✔ ✔
Vader Immortal: Episode III ✖ ✔
A Township Tale ✔ ✔
The Room VR: A Dark Matter ✔ ✔
Walkabout Mini Golf ✔ ✔

Building good VR hardware is really just half the battle when it comes to being a serious player in the industry. The other half is getting compelling content onto the headset.

While Quest 2 still has a considerably larger library of apps and several big standalone exclusives (like Beat Saber) Pico looks to be doing a pretty good job so far in its push to legitimize its platform by making sure that some of the top VR content is available for its customers.

And there’s likely more to come. The company has yet to launch its latest Pico 4 headset in the US, which is a major VR market of both customers and developers. Without the US market in play, there’s less incentive for VR developers to bring their apps to Pico. But if Pico finally launches its headset in the US, it could be the nudge needed for more top VR content to make the leap to the store.

Special thanks to @CkYLee for helping to title availability on the Pico store

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Ben Lang
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."
  • ViRGiN

    You forgot to mention that often these games only share the title name on Pico – games often run worse, does not support modding or DLCs, and not always can play with Quest users in multiplayer.

    Plus literally nobody cares about Pico, other than PCVR elitists who love the idea of giving their personal data to China on a daily basis. Lesser evil than Meta apparently.

    • xyzs

      Go see a shrink dude… seriously…

      • ViRGiN

        You make zero sense but ok

    • Guest

      Even if their devices are better and cheaper there is no difference. They both are pimping violent games just like Valve!

      • Somerandomindividual

        Ok, Quaker.

    • CrusaderCaracal

      Waa waa waa

    • LMAO

      Ignorant troll alert!

      • ViRGiN

        paid chinese shill

        • LMAO

          Ignorant troll alert!

    • Arno van Wingerde

      Please tell us which games have what kind of problems these games have? I can see they cannot play together with Quest, but for the same price you get what is essentially a better device.

  • I have a Pico 4 and confirm the gaming library is not bad. Of course Quest has a wider one.

    • GordonFreeman

      I have Pico 4 and find it’s way more comfortable than the Quest due to the battery being in the back and slimmer all round.

      • kraeuterbutter

        same for me… i have also modded my Pico4 slightly..
        have several different headstraps for my Quests -> but pico4 feels on another level, feels much much lighter on the head
        bigger FOV, better E2EC – for me its a better, more modern headset compared to the Quest2, which feels like a brick compared

  • Octogod

    Wish someone would finally talk publicly about how Meta Quest reviews are for sale and mass review manipulation is easy to spot on the Meta store.

    Not saying any of these are, but I can point to games covered here which are clearly using paid reviews by the thousand.

    • Somerandomindividual

      You write that you can point to them, but of course you don’t because that would be far too much effort…

      • Octogod

        It isn’t that hard to find. Look for the games with the top number of reviews. Read the reviews. They’re mostly overseas bots reposting the same review.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      You couldn’t buy the number of 5* votes needed to get in the Top 20!

      The problem is something else: far too many 5* reviews!

      Compare number 1 to number 20 on the list with a score of 4.89 and 4.78 respectively. If you add 3% 1* scores to the #1, it drops out of the Top 20. For the #2 on the list “Moss: Book II” that requires just 20 votes!

      So, although you could sabotage a game’s score by giving 1* with a few friends, but you could not lift a game to high spot without literally thousands of votes, and only of there not too many people giving a bad score!

      • Octogod

        The game with the most reviews right now is 100% faked.

        You have to keep in mind companies are getting seven to nine figure investment deals. It doesn’t cost that much to make an app and marketing beyond VR is useless, as you can’t easily convince someone to buy an HMD. A portion of that VC money is often used to hire teams to implement fake reviews which pumps the public perception and help their next round of funding.

        How? Facebook logins are available for purchase in bulk. My understanding is that these were able to be converted to Meta accounts by bot, given keys or access via channels to a game, and then place a review in the web view. As play time isn’t shown they don’t even have to launch the app. There are a few extra steps, but I have personally been in on these campaigns and seen them gain hundreds of reviews in days.

        Another path is giving ‘beta’ access or a discord with benefits. If they post a positive review they give away the full game or DLC. It costs them nothing, but it works to spam literally thousands of fake reviews. It’s bribery, but everyone turns a blind eye because it makes the platform look better.

        And you’re right that one stars destroy many apps, as a few drop rating significantly. A similarly targeted bot campaign is often used by competitors to destroy momentum.

  • anarfox

    That’s a weird headline. Instead of having your readers do math, you could just have said 15 instead of 75% of 20. But that wouldn’t have sounded as impressive I guess.

    • Somerandomindividual

      Yeah I did lol when I read it. As a professional journalist I would be a little embarrassed to have written that.

  • Guest

    Yes, because it would be stupid for them to try competing with the same apps as Meta in America. They are just hole-filling where Meta is not competing.

  • Anonymous

    Game companies who deal with Pico either are stupid or completely ignorant of the geo-political situation.

  • Kenny Thompson

    More competition is good but its gonna be a real struggle if you don’t have many (any) exclusives. Imagine the outcome if Microsoft had 75% of the games as Sony but no exclusives?

  • Mat Pawluczuk

    Compound, DYSCHRONIA: Chronos Alternate and Patchworld are now on Pico 4 increasing the overlap from 75% to 90%