Meta will continue to invest "heavily" in VR gaming
Meta assured at GDC that the Quest platform is growing and that the company will continue to invest heavily in VR games.
According to Meta, 100 Oculus Publishing titles shipped in 2024 and more than 200 are in active development. This means that the number of funded titles would have increased, not decreased, since 2023. Through Oculus Publishing, Meta is funding and supporting the development of Quest titles by third-party developers.
Meta's CTO and Head of Reality Labs, Andrew Bosworth, also confirmed at X that investment in VR games will continue:
"We continue to invest heavily in VR gaming and have no plans to stop."
We are still investing massively in VR gaming and don't plan to stop. I think there is a much stronger continuum between social and gaming than there used to be though, true on our platform with things like Gorilla Tag and true elsewhere with things like Fortnite
AdAd- Boz (@boztank) March 19, 2025
Meta gives update on the state of the ecosystem
At GDC, Director of Ecosystem Chris Pruett presented facts and figures on the current state of the Quest ecosystem. Some of them were already published in February, but for the sake of completeness they are listed here again.
- To date, over $2 billion has been spent on Meta Quest content. In February 2022, it was over $1 billion and in October 2022, it was $1.5 billion.
- Annual payments increased by around 12% in 2024 compared to the previous year.
- Usage also increased in 2024. Users spent 30 percent more time in VR than in the previous year.
- The total number of people who own and actively use an MR device is greater than ever before. (It is unclear whether Meta counts pure VR devices, such as Quest 2, as MR devices.)
- The majority of new devices in 2024 are from people who were getting their first Quest headset.
- Teenagers are currently the most active user segment.
- Quest 3S brought more teens and young adults (13-24) to the platform than older headsets.
- While revenue from in-app purchases (IAP) has been growing year-over-year as a percentage of total store revenue, paid apps remain the largest source of revenue.
- The VR enthusiast group (which Meta calls the "VR Elite") is growing much more slowly than other user segments.
These facts and figures were published in a long blog post on the Quest Developer Blog after the presentation.
In it, Pruett rejects the theory that Meta's store changes and policies are to blame for the declining sales of many VR studios in 2024, citing internal research and testing.
"According to our research, the changes to the Horizon mobile app, the deprecation of App Lab, and the opening of the Horizon Store were not significant contributors to the overall decline in revenue that some devs have experienced."
New customers are spending less money than older customers, and the latter are now also spending less. This was already the case before Meta's changes to the store. The currently largest and most active group, teenagers and young adults, tend to be a lot more interested in "social multiplayer meme games" than ig-budget single-player games.
Are you interested in VR and AR? Join the conversation on Facebook, Bluesky or X or share your opinion in the comments below.
For feedback, topic suggestions, or other ideas, please email us at hello@mixed-news.com.
Note: Links to online stores in articles can be so-called affiliate links. If you buy through this link, MIXED receives a commission from the provider. For you the price does not change.
