Zuckerberg Wants Oculus Quest 2 to Sell 10 Million Units. The First Quest Hardly Sold 1 Million.

Admittedly I haven't been following the unveiling of Oculus Quest 2 and all of Facebook's other VR/AR-related announcements this week as closely as I once did. (Owing to, you know, their sheer and total Facebook-itude.) But I should note this interesting point CEO Mark Zuckerberg made in an interview with The Verge's Casey Newton:

Casey Newton: So where are you on this long road to making VR mainstream?

Mark Zuckerberg: VR, I think is well on its way. We had this milestone in our mind that first we needed to get the technology to the place where you could have a standalone headset, it could be portable, it could be high quality — do the tracking and all that. And Quest was the big milestone on that. Then, from an ecosystem perspective, we believed that if we get to 10 million units active, then that’s kind of a critical magic number.

At that point, you have a self-sustaining ecosystem. That’s the next big push: how do we get the technology to be more accessible to more people? A big part of that was driving it to be more affordable, and making it more portable. ... And we’re not at 10 million yet, but I’m optimistic that over the next few years, we’ll get there. And that will really be a new stage of VR.

Emphasis mine, because, wow. 10 million active users isn't even large compared to a single video game console. (Total sales of Nintendo Switch, after 3.5 years on the market: 61 million.) Even more key, the first Oculus Quest barely reached 1/10th those numbers:

As of now, SuperData just confirmed with me directly, the Oculus Quest install base is roughly (and only) 1 million. Almost exactly a year ago, Quest sales were strong enough that it was on track to reach a million by the end of 2019.

I know some readers are skeptical of SuperData's estimates, but revenue numbers reported by Facebook itself also suggest an install base of that size -- or a somewhat larger one that doesn't spend much on content, which is about as bad.

Nearly 500 votes from mostly VR enthusiasts about Oculus Quest 2. 2/3 will sign into their Facebook accounts to enjoy VR. 1/3: https://t.co/61IAPLpEtz pic.twitter.com/hGI4IXhww3

— Ian Hamilton (@hmltn) September 18, 2020

But somehow Facebook expects the Oculus Quest 2, despite some prominent bad reviews, to reach 10x Quest 1's numbers. Even when we're still in the middle of a pandemic, with no safe way to give product demos to curious shoppers. And even when Oculus 2 will come with mandatory Facebook ID log-in, alienating a large fraction of current VR users (to judge by this casual poll by Upload VR's Ian Hamilton).

I mean it could happen if the company spent massively on marketing, but I'm not holding my breath. But as I said, this is quite a risky gamble on the future oF VR as a consumer product.

Comments

[Joey1058]

I think Zuckerberg has been dipping into the same stuff that Rony Abovitz did when he said that they'd sell a million Magic Leaps.

[Adeon Writer]

I'm no Quest or Facebook enthusiast, but the way both the PS5 and the New Xbox are looking to be, less than what you'd expect, I can imagine there's a few people willing to try out a 299 USD headset instead to see what all the fuss is about this holiday.

[Fionalein]

Zuckerberg pulls an Ebbe here. Just like with Altberg's Sansar FB has already invested way too much into VR to have it fail now. They need to succeed in a landslide now. Just like gamblers increase their bids to win back their previous losses the new goals in failed bets on market futures get ever higher and higher. It's an all too familiar pattern.

[RolandLegrand]

I'm not a Facebook fan, far from it. But I think there is more about Facebook Reality Labs than the Quest and the latest user numbers. I think Facebook is taking a long term perspective here. They don't care too much about VR in the next quarter or the next year. They are building for a future ten years away. That future will not be the Quest, but some fancy glasses full of AR/VR/AI technology. There will be smart Facebook glasses next year, and that will just be one step into the direction of real AR glasses. The main thing about these glasses is that they will allow for creating living dat structures from the point of view (literally) of the user. These structures together with hardware innovations will allow the building of a digital virtual assistent.
Maybe that the AR-project (which builds on a lot of the VR stuff they do) will fail too, but even that is not too important, because they'll learn a lot about human behavior and AI while doing all this stuff, and that knowledge will find its way into other Facebook projects.

[TonyVT Skarredghost]

10 Seems a lot, but I think he can sell 5. $299 is really cheap, and the content is getting very good.

[Marn]

The author clearly doesn’t know anything about tech or else he wouldn’t be making these outlandish claims that Facebook will “somehow” reach 10 million quest 2 units sold.

Guess what? It’s been two months and they’re already well on their way to crushing that target before the end of 2021, and we’re not even through the holiday season of 2020.

$299 is an incredible price point for what you get included in the headset. If the author was tech savvy at all they would know that, and that to get an equivalent experience anywhere else, you’d need to pay nearly double. So yeah no shit this device is selling like hotcakes and will continue to do so.

[James]

I see 10M in the ecosystem in 3 years was misconstrued as "10M Quest 2's sold." The former is very doable, especially with time for a Quest 2 successor to do additional barrier reducing.

And 10M users has been a recurring target for Oculus. It's not about plateuing, it's about reaching the minimum rung they need to begin establishing VR as a sustainable platform.

[Matthew Lake]

Oculus is gonna have no problem reaching 10 million units sold of Quest 1/2. It'll be done by 2023.

Look at Google trends: https://twitter.com/Matthew_Lake182/status/1344403539901239298/photo/1

PSVR has sold 6+ Million. Oculus Quest has more interest in the past few months than the entire 4-year history of PSVR. I also lay down some predictions in the thread.

And sure, you might think that is just "interest", but it's clearly obvious when you look at other signals.

Do a comparison on trends for the following: "Quest best buy" and then compare with "PSVR best buy" and do with other stores too.

It shows the same thing essentially. Huge increase in interest for buying Quest relative to PSVR.