Facebook's Oculus Quest 2 Sales Claims Probably Don't Mean What You Think They Mean

Quick tip on spin detection: When a company spokesperson claims their figures have "doubled" or even "quadrupled", but decline to give you specific, absolute numbers, make sure your antennae twitches furiously. So it is with Facebook's Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, recently making this claim about Oculus Quest 2 sales which are being breathlessly repeated by VR enthusiasts:

In response to [BusinessWeek reporter Emily] Chang’s question about when VR will begin to see mainstream traction, Bosworth said:

“If you look a little closely, I think it’s starting to happen right now. The fact that Oculus Quest 2—in just a few months on the market—has outsold not just its predecessor, but all of its predecessors combined, is a tremendous indicator that we are now at that point where we have broken through from the early adopter crowd to an increasingly mainstream crowd.”

This is indeed a significant milestone, especially considering that Quest 2 has only been on the market for five and a half months, while the company’s first headset launched five years ago. 

Is it though? The thing is, what a company says to a reporter is often different from what they're legally obligated to accurately state in their earnings report:

And last January, Facebook reported that it had a $539 million revenue jump from Q4 in 2019 to Q4 in 2020, almost all from Oculus Quest 2 sales. And basic math suggests this means Facebook probably sold between 1.5 to 2 million Oculus Quest 2 units in its first four months on the market. (Factoring in January 2021 through March 2021 sales, it's now probably closer to around 2 million total.)

2 million is not nothing, but that means the Oculus Quest 2 still trails far behind PSVR which sold 5 million units in early last year. If anything, you can spin these numbers in the opposite direction and say this: The PSVR has far outsold Oculus Quest 2 and all its predecessors combined.

Comments

[Sean R. Lynch]

I'm not sure how much sense it makes to compare the Quest 2 to PSVR or even PC HMDs, since they're different platforms. The Quest 2 isn't tethered and has less power, so it'll have a different set of games/applications even if it's nominally the same marketplace. It feels to me like it might be an intermediate step on the way to AR more than a VR headset living in the same space as the others.

Speaking of AR, how long until Google comes out with their own device based on the IP they acquired with last June's acquisition of North? North already had their own virtual retina display and had also acquired the IP from Intel's canceled Vaunt glasses.

[targetehr]

Does the non-advertising revenue also include the game sales revenue from both Quest 2 & Rift S? If so, that makes it at even lower number for Quest 2 sales, if you subtract all of that from the figures above.

[sirhc desantis]

Love the way you used that old pic of suited zombies. Possibly the best anti-advert ever.

[Amanda]

I'm not exactly sure why you are comparing total lifetime PlayStation VR sales of 5 million to.. Your example.. of 2 million Oculus Quest in 4 months.

Pretty impressive Oculus got 2 million sales in 4 months and PlayStation took 4 years to hit 5 million sales?

[Wagner James Au]

I'd flip it around and say PSVR sales are really small compared to its addressable market -- only 4% or so PS4 owners have a PSVR! So while Quest 2 sales are definitely better than Quest 1, they still haven't even come close to competing with PSVR's modest install base.