Meta's Metaverse Platform Horizon Worlds Likely Trails Far Behind VRChat & Rec Room in Usage On Its Own Oculus App Store

Since Facebook/Meta announced its Q4 2021 earnings report today -- the first quarter of the company operating under the new name Meta, with a stated direction of making the metaverse -- let's take a look at its first attempt at launching a metaverse platform for a mass market.

I'm talking of course about Horizon Worlds, open to the public late last December. Here's its user ratings so far, taken directly from the Oculus app store:

3.5 stars from 541 Quest users is... not bad, I guess, not atypical for an open beta launch.

These ratings also give us some insight into how many people have installed Horizon Worlds. As a general industry rule of thumb, for every single app store user rating, assume there are 50-100 other users who did not take the time to rate the app. 

On that assumption, roughly 27,050-54,100 Quest owners have installed Horizon Worlds since its closed beta launch.

Now let's compare that to two other metaverse platforms also available on the Oculus app store, with similar features and functionality. First up, VRChat on the Oculus Store:

10,651 ratings. I.E., likely 532,550 - 1,065,100 Quest owners have installed Oculus' VRChat app. 

Next up, Rec Room on the Oculus store:

14,678 ratings. I.E., likely 733,900 - 1,467,800 Quest owners have installed Oculus' Rec Room.

Notably, based on previous earnings reports, the Quest 2 had about 5-6 million owners before the 2021 holiday season, and likely has an install base of over 10 million now. So on the high end, approximately 1 in 10 Quest owners have installed at least one of these three metaverse platforms. 

On that score, Meta's own metaverse platform still trails far behind in installs on its own VR platform.

To be fair to Meta, both VRChat and Rec Room have been available in the Oculus app store since 2019, while Meta's Horizon Worlds has only been generally available for the last two months. Then again, to be fair to both VRChat and Rec Room, neither of them have anywhere near the vast reach, marketing budget, and cross-promotional power of Meta. 

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

Give them some credit; at least they have legs now.

[Mondy]

Don't forget, Horizon Worlds isn't available in UK, Europe and the rest of the world yet. Across the pond it still says "coming soon"
Oh, I can't wait /s