Virtual reality is growing its community more than than ever. The Q4 report for virtual and augmented reality headsets show that. The Oculus Quest is selling like never before. Not only is the hardware doing well, but the Oculus Store saw nearly 5$ Million sold in games and apps just on Christmas Day. The Oculus Quest is simply killing it.
If you wanted to make a couple analogies to simplify how good the Quest is doing, it could be limitless. The Quest is as popular as Pizza in New York. The Quest is putting up real good numbers, numbers never seen before; the Quest is the Steph Curry of VR headsets. Want to talk music analogies? The Quest is Michael Jackson in record sales (before Leaving Neverland).
Each time a major media outlet, or even Facebook, talks about the Quest, its breaking records. But is this kind of success sustainable? Lets dive into what the future holds and find out.
Real Good Numbers
All the way back in June of 2019, the idea that Oculus had reportedly sold over 5$ Million in content sales only from the Quest was revealed. Although it seemed unrealistic at the time, the rumors stood true. The Oculus Quest alone was breaking SteamVR records, which allow nearly every headset to participate in the buying of content. This was impressive, but the headset was new. Who knew what this would look like 6 months later?
Well… bad news for competitors. During the quarterly report for Oculus and Facebook, Zuckerberg said that Christmas was kind to Oculus, as all three storefronts companioned for nearly 5$ Million in sales. Now this included the Go and the Rift Platform, so knowing what the Quest did alone is nearly impossible. But we have reason to believe that the Quest was responsible for more than half of that.
In data collected by superdataresearch.com, the results show that the Oculus Quest sold roughly 317K headsets in the fourth quarter alone in 2019. This, paired with a successful launch, has lead many people to believe that the Oculus Quest sold nearly 1 million units in 2019. (Note that the Quest wasn’t available for purchase until May 21st of 2019)
So yes, the Christmas numbers are huge, and there is a reason to think a lot of them came from the Quest store. The Rift S and Go combined for only 155K sales during the fourth quarter of 2019. Not even half of the Quest’s Steph Curry-like numbers.
No Stops Ahead
Looking at these numbers, and looking at the tech that Oculus is slowly deploying on the Quest, there is no reason to take a drastic chunk off sales. Clearly Christmas Day was an anomaly, but the hardware sales weren’t. The holiday season comes around every year, and there’s nothing out there to make Oculus think they won’t dominate the 2020 season as well. There’s not one other competing company that seems to be ready to release any hardware, let alone standalone powerful gaming hardware.
Hand tracking is still in beta, and the Oculus Link tech is too. When this is launched fully, it is going to change the Quest and the consumer market. There are games trying to support the hand tracking, but it isn’t working out as well as many would have thought. This is going to only get better with time though.
The Oculus Link has been nothing short of amazing in its first month or so of beta testing. Thousands of Quest users are getting to experience high-end tethered gaming via the Link, even though the official Link cable is still back ordered all across the world.
Hand tracking and Link capabilities are changing the game and creating a roadmap for the future of virtual reality.
Where Does AR Come In?
Oculus has told everyone they are making AR glasses. We haven’t seen them yet, or even heard about them since the official ‘they’re coming’ statement. We thought CES 2020 would be a good time to demo, but that didn’t turn out either.
AR seems like it would be a hit, regardless of who buys the product. Whether it be a business owner trying to get the new tech into the workflow, or a simple consumer looking for a more convenient style, people will want to buy the AR headset. Unless its riddled with hardware and software issues, the Facebook loyals will find room for the glasses in their budget.
We have posted a handful of ideas regarding AR > VR, and we are sticking to our guns.
Quest is Sustainable… Until the Rise of AR
If you are looking for an answer on if the Quest numbers are sustainable, the answer is yes. There is not one reason in the world why the Oculus Quest would slow down in sales. The content is there, the hardware is great, the operating systems are only improving, and the company is supporting the rise of the product.
The only answer that makes sense to why the Quest would see a falloff is AR. And it would be the launch of their own AR headset or glasses. We will likely get one more release of VR hardware from Oculus, something comparable to the Quest, before the massive launch of AR glasses. So not only will the Quest sustain for the next year or so, but it will only be taken over by the next piece of VR hardware.
That will only be successful until its older brother augmented reality glasses come in. We don’t know much about these glasses yet, but we do know one thing. Everyone is going to want a pair.
