2-3 Games Per Owner, Based on Meta & Industry Figures

Meta Connect’s keynote came and went today, and to my surprise, there were no announcements of the Quest 2’s total install base so far. However, in a story earlier this week, the New York Times estimated it to be 15 million:

The company’s consumer V.R. headset, the Quest 2, is the most popular V.R. headset on the market with more than 15 million sold, according to outside estimates. Its Oculus V.R. app — which has since been rebranded Meta Quest — has been installed over 21 million times on iOS and Android devices, according to an estimate by Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm.

That tracks with my own Quest 2 install base estimate last April, when I pegged it at around 12 million back then.

That also gives us a good way to gauge the numbers that Meta did announce today — revenue for top-selling games un the Quest so far:

Of the main Quest store titles, 33 have grossed more than $10 million and 55 titles have exceeded $5 million in gross revenue...  The Quest store launched with the original standalone headset in May 2019 with Meta saying more than $1.5 billion has been spent on games and apps since that time.

Other notable data points shared by Meta include The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners surpassing $50 million in revenue on Quest alone, “nearly double its revenue on all other platforms.” Blade & Sorcery: Nomad made $1 million in two days while Zenith: The Last City crossed that threshold in 24 hours. Resident Evil 4, meanwhile, made $2 million in the first 24 hours. Stress Level Zero’s Bonelab made $1 million in less than an hour, establishing it as “the fastest-selling app in Quest history.”

Emphasis mine, because now we can play: Guess the Quest 2 attach rate! (I.E., how many Quest 2 software titles are Quest 2 owners buying?)

How does 1-2 games per Quest 2 owner sound? Because based on my back-of-envelope math, that’s about what it is. 

Here’s the details:

• 33 Quest 1/2 games have grossed $10 million+, i.e. $330 million + gross.
• 55 Quest 1/2 games have grossed $5 million +, i.e. $275 million+ gross.
• Assume an average Quest 1/2 game price is $30. (New premium games like Bonelab cost $40, while older premium games like SuperHot cost $25.)

$605,000,000 million in software sales at an average price of $30 per copy comes out to… 20.2 million Quest 1/2 games sold.

Another words, assuming gross software revenue is overwhelmingly for the Quest 2 (not the Quest 1, which only has about 1 million owners), consumers are buying an average of 1-2 hit Quest games each. 

The attach rate is slightly larger if you go by the total Quest 1/2 revenue figure of $1.5 billion total for the Quest’s lifetime. At a $30 average price, that gets you fifty million copies of software. Divided among 16 million Quest 1/2 owners, that’s an attach rate of three Quest games each.

So to be on the safe side, I’m estimating the Quest 2 attach rate is 2-3 games.

As a comparison point, the attach rate for the Nintendo Switch, which launched in 2017, is 7.4 games. Which to be fair, has been on the market at least 2 years longer than the Quest 2.

BoneLab image copyright Stress Level Zero.