Meta has sold nearly 20M Quest headsets, but retention struggles remain (2023) | Hacker News Reader

Meta has sold nearly 20M Quest headsets, but retention struggles remain (2023)

roadtovr.com

23 pointsmgh258 comments

20 million is on the same scale as the Xbox Series X, but I've heard monthly active usage is something like 75x lower.

As someone who moonlights as a VR dev (cough checkout my solodeveloped indie starfighter sim Rogue Stargun [https://roguestargun.com]), I think Meta also makes it really unclear how to get on their storefront. It's a process completely gated by human review which can take months (by which time Meta will have already released a new headset)

There are killer apps out there, even low quality ones (like Gorilla Tag) which have virtually zero discoverability but high organic popularity. Please Meta, make it clearer to your devs/creators (who pay a 30% tax to you!) what exactly they need to do to get their apps on the store!

That is a /solo/ project? Whoa

How fast does it take for Steam to approve a game under similar circumstances?

Steam approves EVERYTHING so long as the store description matches the game content.

Actually, Steam is essentially equivalent to Applab. Applab and steam both have a manual review process that is not comprehensive. The difference is that steam relies on algorithms to do discoverability whereas metas store does not surface applab titles AT ALL.

There is a lot of garbage on steam for sure, but that's a problem handled by recommended algorithms, not the subjective opinions of reviewers for the most part

I use my quest a lot, almost daily, but only use two games on it. So my retention might come off as small even though I’m a heavy user. I would guess lots of Quest owners are in this bucket. They use an app, usually BeatSaber, but aren’t interested in much of anything else, especially less casual games.

This metric is called the attach rate, and it's lower for quest than Xbox by an order of magnitude supposedly. However, even 10 percent of Xbox owners actually only have 1 game - call of duty. It's just that CoD players play it every single week!

Its odd to me, but I would describe VR as not addicting. Its a very fun experience when you are there, but I never really feel the pull to go back. Also, the amount of stuff you can do in VR is not much. People act like you can have a fake VR house and have apps on the wall in each room you walk through. Can't do that. I should be able to do scrolling RSS feeds on the walls of my room like a poster, but I can't do that yet. What about paper documents on the floor that you can point at and select and then MS Word opens? Any type of interaction like that is not there yet really.

VR gaming reminds me of coin-op arcades. Those games were never as fun when they were ported to consoles. There is something about having a dedicated hardware (seats, steering wheels, light guns) that goes away when you have a home system and have to purchase all those accessories and play at home by yourself.

Also, with 55" 4K TVs and 3-monitor setups becoming common, there's plenty of immersion available with last-gen technology. Maybe for most, VR is something that's better as a one-off sort of thing.

I think the main issue with VR is that it is fundamentally different from both gaming consoles and computers. I bought a meta quest 3 last year specifically to play table tennis, I play it every single day until my muscles are sore. The other apps and games, impressive as they may be, are just gimmicks. You get awed for the first few hours and put the device away never to be touched again.

I would say the biggest hurdle is actually motion sickness. Every game or app that allows your avatar to move through controller usage, rather than moving around your room (such as table tennis) can not be used for longer periods of time. My wife who is prone to motion sickness can not wear the device for more than 10 minutes. Myself, who had never had motion sickness before in my life, can handle a full hour before being overwhelmed.

> everything I don’t personally enjoy is a gimmick

Sure ok.

The Nintendo Wii was a new kind of gaming console, at a time when the industry was a fraction of the size it is today. Yet it got people standing up and moving while gaming. People bought them in droves to play with friends via local multiplayer. It forced Xbox and PS3 to also add motion detecting paddle accessories to their consoles.

It can be done. Facebook just isn't the company to do it.

It definitely varies from person to person, but I would dispute the assertion that it cannot be used for longer periods of time in principle. The category of games where your avatar moves through controller usage includes most flight sims, for example, and yet some people (myself included) can play them for hours in VR. I also play Ground Branch in VR sometimes, using keyboard and mouse for navigation, and it only takes a couple minutes to settle into a comfortable state. So I think there's a subset of people for whom this is not a problem. The question is how large that subset is...

I'd be open to another look at the device if the meta account requirement is removed to setup the device.

It's still a nonstarter until that point.

Why? It’s already fully decoupled from all the other accounts (Facebook and such) and surely you see the need for some account, for a device with a market place?

I'm not interested in any marketplace they might offer; I want it fully decoupled from Meta.

They don't want to offer that and that's fine as their prerogative, but it's a nonstarter for my needs which is to involve Meta as little as possible in my life. I had high regard for Oculus until they got bought up by zuck and the money.

Retention is always tough for new technologies. I remember when 3D printers were having their big splash and people were buying them like crazy, once they did a few prints it lost all the allure. Same thing with VR, I'd imagine.

When people got or get a mobile phone the retention is 95% plus or something crazy like that.

John Carmack gave a really interesting talk a few years back when he talked about how the biggest opportunity for Quests was to get all the ones in a cupboard out and being used.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXmY26pOE-Y

(Disclaimer - I have a Quest 2 in a cupboard.... )

I had one and I sold it. I'd be more interested to know how many are in active use and how many have been resold.

I one the other hand bought one before Christmas and love it. I got a Valve Index when it first released and while a fun gimmick, I don't think I've used it more than 20 hours. I have yet to play Half Life Alyx.

The Quest 3 on the other hand is so plug and play I put it on pretty much every evening after work, especially because I have grown to dislike sitting on my desk to play video games.

This generation of Quest might be the first device to reach critical mass I reckon. A lot of naysayers are a bit like those that believed videogames to be a fad in the 1980s. Yeah, it's nascent technology, but it is improving at breakneck pace. Even Apple is in the space now.

Every kid loved videogames. I see no such enthusiasm for VR. My experience mirrors that of many others here, and of those I handed the 3 VR headsets I bought over the years: interesting, but just interesting. One off experience.

I was just house sitting for some friends who went out of town and my partner and I watched over their 3 boys. Good kids, but addicted to screens. None of them cared anything about VR. The youngest just watched the equivalent of tiktok on TV for hours on end, until we could pry him away to go for a bike ride outside with us. The two older ones just played games on their computers. I found this quite interesting cause the family has the money to pay for stuff like this, the kids just don't care about it.

For me, the only game I really enjoyed was beatsaber and I got to the point where I wasn't going to get any better and stopped. That's when I realized this thing isn't for me and sold it before it ended up collecting dust.

You can’t let any kid under 12 play VR yet, so we have to keep telling our son this. He can’t play BeatSaber until he is 12, it’s almost like a law.

Two of the boys were over 15 and one under, but none seemed to have an interest in it at all.

Oh interesting, I didn't know that. Looking it up [0], it is actually 13+, so you're safe for another year. =)

[0] https://www.meta.com/quest/safety-center/ - Meta accounts are available for ages 10+ on Meta Quest 2 and 3 (may vary depending on country); all other Meta Quest headsets are for ages 13+.

I think they are being overly conservative but here we are. My kid is 7 so it’s a long time before he is old enough. But there is enough popularity about BeatSaber here that he wants to just play that.

I'm pretty well convinced that unless you start beatsaber at a super young age, you'll never get the skill to hit the advanced levels. I got fairly high up and just realized that I physically just can't move that fast, but I'm old now... so it is what it is.

You don't have to play expert+ to get enjoyment from the game.

I am competitive with myself and got bored.

If you DGAF about the small niches where VR makes a huge improvement, like flight sims, driving sims, basically any sim where you just sit in one place, and also shooting games are pretty good, then VR provides no improvement to video gaming. The vast majority of games are NOT improved by vague "it increases immersion" claims. Nobody would play FIFA if you had to put down the controller and run around and buy $200 worth of trackers for your feet so you could kick an imaginary ball with no feedback.

Nevermind the fact that some portion of humans will never be able to do basically anything with a screen attached to their face because they are too sensitive to motion sickness.

There are some similarly small entertainment niches outside of gaming, too. For example, high-res (think 8K+) fractal videos in VR are amazing to watch, and I use it for that regularly.

It's just not clear that all this stuff in aggregate adds up to enough users to sustain a business model that would allow for VR as affordable as Quest 3.

Bought a Quest 2 in 2022, I got a lot of use out of it initially (mostly played Pavlov Shack, SUPERHOT VR, and community-made ports of classic FPS games), then fell off using it after ~8 months. When I built my new PC I had a blast with it again, I blitzed through Half-Life Alyx and was hopping on a community VRChat meetup every weekend... Then I fell off again.

Messing about in VR and shooting has to be the most fun I've had with vidya since I was a kid, but it's the dedication required which kills it for me. I have to be in the right mood to go into my cupboard, take it out the box, connect it to my PC, and play about for a few hours – when I come home from work if I want to shoot some baddies it's way easier to sit down at my desk to do it. And I don't end up drenched in sweat at my PC.

The last time I picked it up was back in November for a VRChat meetup. It's a shame really because playing VR games is such a joy, but it's marred with each little roadbump to get there.

The struggles you people have seem unfortunate. It takes me the same amount of time or less to jump into my Q3 and start playing as it does anything else. For a start I don’t keep things I want to use in a closet which I suppose helps.

I read 6 million MAU which if reasonably accurate answers part of your question.

I have a Quest 2 and haven't touched mine in years mainly because of the set up procedure (which is common in VR headsets): I have to find available space first by moving furniture around, then I need to calibrate the headset to work in that space. After usage, I have to clean the device with wipes to make sure sweat doesn't cause bacteria to grow.

If some of the items were addressed somehow, I'd be using it more frequently.

Also, the level of entertainment the headset provides is less than what I'd get out of a console, so there's even less incentive to use it.

The first issue is solved by Quest 3: 1) calibration is a matter of seconds, 2) it remembers all previously calibrated spots, so I basically never need to calibrate.

Yes, you need about 2m² space if you want to move/do fitness, but that's something no VR can solve.

If your fitness experience doesn’t involve actual movement from one spot (like BeatSaber, fitXR, supernatural, on shape, etc…) you only need about 1m^2, probably a bit less (basically wherever your hands can extend to needs to be unobstructed).

Beat saber does require movement to dodge blocks, though. And while 1m of sideways movement might technically be enough to dodge anything in the game (not sure tho...), in practice it can be hard to not move more than that once you start. I certainly wouldn't want to do that risking crashing into the surrounding furniture by moving further than necessary.

If you are just playing BeatSaber, since you don’t move much you don’t really need a lot of space allocated, you still set up a room boundary but just draw it wherever. It’s too bad that Quest doesn’t have a stationary but non-stationary guardian setting that doesn’t require room boundaries.

Current versions actually support both stationary and room boundary. Also, since you begin in Passthrough mode, you can start using the device immediately (and only set up boundary when you actually need it - apps trigger space setup only when moving to VR mode for the first time, if needed).

Stationary is really bad though, it won’t move your perspective with your head movement. Better to setup a room boundary, even over furniture, and just stay in one place.

It does move perspective, though?

Headsets break any bit of social components from a shared screen. There is something to be said for 2-5 people sitting around and consuming the same content and (almost) the same view simultaneously. Maybe overtime we'll get used to it, and it will seem normal. For example, when the iphone was released, and the folks with iphones would stare at them in public and not talk to anyone. We would give friends a hard time about it, but now were all that person.

I mean most videogames have dropped spit screen multiplayer from their featureset for years. Still a few holdouts I think.. mariocart/marioparty/smashbros I imagine .. though haven't tested all of those on the switch, i know kart at least still has ssmp and of course party.

So that couch co-op/battle situation is already rarer than it used to be, and the games that support it skew younger or are indy (lovers in a dangerous spacetime, etc)

Online multiplayer with each player having their own screen is much more popular these days it seems.

I certainly spent a lot of time playing couch co-op when I was a much younger man (nintendo64/playstation/saturn/xbox era and before .. let's here it for MULE on the c64) but that kind of gameplay seems to be fading with a few exceptions.

I have played some AR boardgame prototypes using the quest 3 and during the pandemic experimented with playing boardgames with friends in tabletop simulator, experimenting a few times with using my vr headset. They are still compelling situations.

In the case of the AR prototype, that was a shared space. Four of us in a room with our own quests but all observing a shared table that contained essentially a boardgame.

In the case of my pandemic online boardgaming, the presence of others is basically experienced the same as any multiplayer game where you might be on voice chat with the other players. VR or not.

I think the AR focus of the vision pro and the quest 3 might change this view you have a bit around many people in a room all with their 'own screen' but able to see 'through it' and put eyes on their opponents physical forms.

> but able to see 'through it' and put eyes on their opponents physical forms.

Perhaps, but that's still putting a huge social distance between everyone, whether they're in the same room or not. It would be little different than a room full of people using their smartphones. You may be physically in the same place, but there's still a wall between everyone nonetheless.

> Headsets break any bit of social components from a shared screen. There is something to be said for 2-5 people sitting around and consuming the same content and (almost) the same view simultaneously.

Correct. This is also why 3D TVs (also requiring goggles) crashed and burned.

3D TV hasn't caught on because it's an expensive gimmick that people don't generally want to pay for. Many sets also compromised on ordinary 2D quality to get 3D working, a particularly poor bargain.

I've been to 3D films with family/friends/dates and there's nothing antisocial about wearing polarized glasses. But for the most part it wasn't a real improvement on just watching a movie. Sometimes the gimmick worked better than others, but always a gimmick. I wouldn't pay for it at home, but the glasses involved have nothing to do with why.

Video games as a single screen per person experience are already a successful market. This does not explain why headsets are different.

Honestly, their hostility to pornography is hurting retention. I've been meaning to write an article about it but pornography is an incredible booster for VR tech.

Everyone watches it at some point, many multiple times per day. It's immersive and novel.

Even better, people are used to bridging perceived gaps in their head. By that I mean people care less about things like resolution or story or frame rate. As long as monkey brain sees skin the brain will do a lot.

There's also just a ton of content out there - professional, indie, and amateur content producers are (or were, last time I checked, which has been a while) pumping it out (no pun intended). Most of it can be found for free!

Meta has been spending a lot of money on VR, and I suspect a significant portion of that is getting mainstream content producers to do stuff in vr - NFL/UFC/etc. putting vr cameras at events, game studios spending time and money to port games to vr (i don't think bethesda would have done skyrim vr entirely on their own dime). With porn, you have tens of thousands of hours of VR content, growing daily, that most users are able to find for free. They'll come back daily for that.

The issue is the difficulty on quest. You can download one of the browsers and do it there, but last I checked firefox reality was dead and I couldn't get wolvic to work on my quest 2. Not sure if things have changed since I last checked but there just weren't a lot of options.

I get that they want to be the gateway to VR content on their devices so they can get a cut of it but it's not really helping. I'm also not gonna buy a VR device specifically for porn, so after having the quest 2 for a few years (and not using it for at least a year), I'm just gonna sit back and wait a couple generations. There are some good games but I feel like this is a field of dreams situation - if you build it they will come. Build a platform that lets people do non-illegal things in VR and they'll come.

Like right now no one is using VR for work. They're using it to 1. game, 2. watch porn, and a very far 3. is consuming other content like experiencing events in VR.

Embrace it! Unsure why this corporation has suddenly found morals but only for pornography. Think of how much money an onlyfans app would make esp. if they started selling VR cameras.

Is it unreasonably pedantic to want the title here to be "20MM" since the original post was "20 Million" and the "thousand thousand" abbreviation should be correctly used?

The symbol to denote a million is M according to the SI.

If this were attached to a noun like "units" (e.g. Munits, like Mb in Megabits) I'd think the SI was a reasonable place from which to draw guidance. But it's attached to the number which to my eye seems like the accounting/finance Roman Numeral style would be expected.

Thinking about it more maybe the MM should only mean million when there's a dollar sign. I'm not so confident anymore.

20M is correct and I don't know why people think "million" should be abbreviated as "MM".

M is Mega, as in a Million. "thousand thousand" would be "kk".

It's because in finance/accounting the MM is taken from Roman Numerals. I'm not sure why it's got magically implicit multiplication instead of the standard Roman Numeral reading (2000 for MM) but such is life.

Interesting, a thread from another article on this topic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7451283

This is an outdated article

Agreed. This article is 12 months old.

> the company has to do a better job at keeping customers using the headsets well after their purchase

I mean I understand that this is what these people are paid to say, but it sure strikes me as odd. I could be wrong but my assumption is that the honeymoon ends pretty quickly for VR headsets. No fault of Meta — they just went all in on the wrong horse.

Saw a YouTube video yesterday — a guy finds a VR headset in a Japanese thrift store. It made me wonder how long until headsets show up in thrift stores like Rock Band guitars and DDR dance pads.

How can you say "no fault of Meta" when their CEO was the worst imaginable pitchman for a VR future?

VR wasn't a joke in the public consciousness until Zuck did his Metaverse presentation looking like a Nintendo Mii avatar from 2006.

I'm of the opinion that VR was/is always going to be a novelty.

"Quest 2 appears to be the vast majority". Quest 1 and 2 cannot do mixed reality, you can compare them to a smartphone without a camera, you miss a lot of use cases and engagement

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