Quest 3 Is Now The 3rd Most Used Headset On Steam, Rapidly Approaching Valve Index
Quest 3 was the third most used VR headset on Steam in January, surpassing Oculus Rift S and almost catching up to Valve Index.
The data comes from the Steam Hardware & Software Survey. It’s offered to a random sample of Steam’s user base each month. If you accept, it uploads a list of your PC specs and peripherals to Valve, as well as any headset used on SteamVR in the past month.
Quest 3’s usage share continues to grow faster than any other headset by far. It was 5.2% in November, then 9.27% in December, and now 14.05% in January.
As we predicted it would last month, Quest 3 is now used more on Steam than the PC-native Oculus Rift S. And it probably won’t be long until it surpasses the Valve Index to take the #2 spot.
Quest 2 still holds the top spot with more usage than second and third place combined, as it has since shortly after it launched.
The hardware survey includes Quest via Valve’s Steam Link app, Meta’s (Air) Link mode, or the third-party app Virtual Desktop.
This news comes right after Meta’s Reality Labs AR/VR division posted record quarterly revenue, which Meta’s CFO told investors was “driven by Quest 3 sales during the holiday season”.
All Meta headsets together – Oculus Rift, Rift S, Oculus Quest, Quest 2, Quest Pro, and Quest 3 – continue to make up the majority of VR headset use on Steam at almost 69%, and there’s no known serious competitor inbound. Meta might actually increase its lead if the rumored ‘Quest 3 Lite’ launches. Valve remains a distant second with its Index headset, at just over 18%.
The percentage of Steam users using any VR headset at at all also increased significantly, from 1.84% in December to 2.24% in January – the highest since August 2022.
As well as holiday Quest sales, this may have been driven by the release of praydog’s UEVR mod, a free tool released at the start of January that injects VR support into almost any modern PC game made with Unreal Engine.
David Heaney
