VRChat Teases Official Android Mobile App Built on Quest 2 Version

VRChat’s latest developer update quietly includes details on its long-awaited mobile-app coming soon (watch above):

To start, VRChat on Android Mobile will only be available to VRChat Plus users. We want to get you a build ASAP to try out and start working with, while also allowing us time to refine the UI and UX before a full public launch. This also allows us to get your feedback about the app so you can help us track down issues and annoyances.

We plan to launch VRChat on Android Mobile to VRChat Plus users within 3-4 months. This timing could change! It depends entirely on how the development process goes.

This is pretty huge. VRChat has trailed behind Rec Room in terms of user numbers because the former is VR/PC only, whereas Rec Room has also been on mobile and consoles for years.

There’s also a painful irony here, at least for Meta, which has struggled to gain user traction with Horizon Worlds while getting outpaced by VRChat and Rec Room:

Since the Meta Quest runs Android, any world or avatar that works on Quest loads just fine on Android mobile.

For a refresher, this is was what John Carmack said shortly before quitting Meta, about the reason why Meta raised the price of the Quest 2:

Quest 2 owners are not buying enough premium content and instead, are using their headset for free-to-play metaverse platforms VRChat and Rec Room.

“When you have some of the most popular apps on Quest are free apps, VRChat and Rec Room, that we get no revenue from at all, and while they are sitting there at the top of our ranking list in many cases, there’s there’s not a lot of internal push for that,” as he puts it. (Watch above at about 41 minutes in.)

In other words: Because Meta failed to make its metaverse platform mobile-first, but built its VR headset on top Android, it’s now falling even farther behind VRChat, a small startup in comparison.

Read the rest here.

Hat tip: Adeon.