Staying Power of New VR Games Suggest Emergence of "Solid, Niche Market" (Comment of the Week)

Last week I noted usage of VR headsets on Steam still remains below 1% of the market, but Sinespace CPO Adam Frisby has a more positive perspective on the same data:

Here's a interesting chart, which was pointed out to me recently. [See above and here.] That's 10 popular VR games over time (and yes, there's some selection bias there, it's not all of them). The key thing to note is that these are all VR-only games (no desktop users).

The interesting thing here to note is staying power -- Fallout 4 VR, Skyrim VR, etc all were flash in the pan, people picked them up, and dropped them. What we're seeing with newer titles like Beat Saber is retention - people are going back into the games over and over again, which has not really happened with VR titles until the past 6 months or so.

That gives me some evidence that there is some long term viability here - the problems though are still numerous. A lot of the fundamental hardware issues have not been addressed yet; weight, comfort, heat/sweat, etc are substantially better than two years ago, but still not nearly as solved as they need to be. And the other big issue is space - not everyone has room for a 2x2m+ play area where they can sprawl out.

That said, I think if the market grows 5-10x from now (to 10% of the PC gaming population), that's enough for a solid, but niche market segment -- like RPGs/RTSs which occupy a similar percentage.

I actually agree with this: It's quite possible we'll see VR headset growth reach 1 in 10 of the PC gamer population. That would be enough to sustain a small ecosystem of low budget indie VR game developers. Technically that would make VR games a niche of a niche (core PC gamers) of a niche (core gamers including console gamers), but for folks like Beat Games Studio based in Prague, it's quite sustainable.

Speaking of which, the game drawing the most Steam users after Beat Saber is Pavlov VR, a VR-only Counterstrike-type FPS that's been out on the market since 2017. (To Adam's point about sustainability.) As with VRchat, it's popular with YouTubers, so watch a wacky Let's Play below.

Comments

[William Burns]

People still play Pac-Man, and there is a solid niche market for classic arcades just the same.