The Oculus Quest VR headset app has "slaughtered" during Christmas in 2021! On December 25, Oculus App reached the top of the free download list in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the United States, defeating social software such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
The Oculus application is a must-have software for the Oculus Quest series of VR headsets owned by Meta (formerly Facebook), which also shows the surge in new users of the Oculus Quest series during Christmas.
According to US technology media Road to VR, Oculus Quest 2 accounts for 39.62% of VR devices connected to Steam, far exceeding 15.79% of the Valve Index and 8.26% of HTC Vive. From these data, we see that, at least in the US consumer-grade VR headsets, the status of Oculus Quest 2 is temporarily unshakable.
How does Meta attract new users to participate in the VR experience? Are consumer-grade VR headsets beginning to "break the circle"? What new actions does Meta have before and after the Oculus App reaches the top? In the process of investigating this phenomenon in-depth, I tried to find the answer to the question.
The worse you scold, the happier you buy
According to the statistics of Sensor Tower, a foreign data agency, from December 22, the downloads of Oculus App in the Apple App Store free download list in the United States began to maintain an upward trend, peaking on December 25, ranking first. Subsequently, the ranking of the Oculus App began to fall.
Market research company KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Justin Patterson also revealed that around Christmas Eve, Oculus is one of the top five entertainment apps in five countries and one of the top ten apps in the United States.
In addition to research institutions, some game developers are also starting to "Chinese New Year" on social media, and they have published their own work data to confirm this.
The VR social platform Rec Room announced that during the Christmas period, more than 1 million VR players logged on to its platform within 60 hours.
Lemming VR, the developer of the VR game "Gorilla Tag", also said that the number of players during the Christmas period has increased sharply. During the Christmas period, 344,000 users logged into the software, compared with the previous maximum of 26,000, achieving a user growth of nearly 15 times.
VR sports game "Golf+", VR simulator application "Hand Physics Lab" and other types of manufacturers also posted their own data sheets and joined the "festival" team.
From multiple sources of information, the VR headset Oculus Quest 2 did gain a lot of new users at Christmas. But what is more interesting is that on December 20th, when Yahoo Finance selected global companies, Meta also won the title of "Worst Company of the Year" and received up to 8% of the "worst" vote.
From this point of view, scolding is cursing, but entering the "meta-universe", users may still choose Oculus Quest 2 to embrace Meta.
Climbed to the top of both Apple and Google charts
Since Qualcomm CEO An Meng said that Oculus Quest 2 shipments may have reached 10 million units, the Quest series seems to have been on the path of "breaking the circle".
For example, this time the Oculus App won first place in the double list of Apple and Google, which seems to be an unexpected "climb", but its rise is the result of the dense layout of Meta's three-point layout from content services, hardware facilities, and marketing strategies. .
Oculus has a rich VR content library. In terms of games, there are "Beat Saber", "Resident Evil 4 VR", "Star Wars" series and so on. Many foreign netizens have discussed playing "Beat" on their social software for the first time. "Saber" feelings, interesting, fresh, and happy have become the common vocabulary.
In addition to some online games, Meta has created the official VR application testing platform App Lab, which allows developers to independently develop some interesting mini-games.
Users can not only experience the fun of VR games on their own but also share the highlights they feel in the VR world to their social platforms.
For example, Oculus users can use the Oculus App and the MR camera of Apple devices to take pictures of the VR game scene the user is experiencing.
Eliminating the need for complicated shooting steps and high requirements for device hardware, Oculus and Apple has provided a new path for VR social interaction, which also enhances users' social stickiness and gives full play to user creativity.
These are just a small part of the recent Oculus system v35 update, in addition to the addition of Messenger calls, cloud backup, and other functions. The monthly system update speed also makes users feel that Meta is full of sincerity.
In terms of hardware facilities, although Oculus Quest 2 has been released for nearly a year, the Snapdragon XR2 processor, 128G of large memory, and the price of US$299 all make it still competitive.
As a technology company that started as a social platform, Meta also promoted the coming of Christmas this time. Meta not only arranged a Quest Day pop-up event, but also launched an "invited courtesy" event.
At the same time, on the Oculus official website, all kinds of tutorials are available, how to play, what to play and how, Meta has already arranged for you. These contents have greatly reduced the user's threshold for use.
In addition, we have also noticed that when many VR manufacturers are still affected by the "core shortage", Meta still guarantees that Oculus Quest 2 is always "in stock", which also reveals Meta's relatively strong supply Chain management capabilities.
Such a large amount of investment has also allowed Meta to receive generous returns. Many foreign media have mentioned in their reports that “Now, everywhere you can see kids happy after receiving Oculus Quest 2 for Christmas.”
On social platforms, we can see that whether you want to send friends, children, or parents, Oculus Quest 2 has become one of the popular gifts. Oculus’s “out of the circle” at Christmas this time also allowed the use of VR headsets to reach full coverage.
Even under this craze, some users who had a normal perception of Oculus Quest 2 have picked up the Oculus Quest 2 hidden in the corner and started to explore the VR world again.
Want to be a killer app?
Since almost all VR headset manufacturers do not disclose the shipments of their products, most VR users download games through the Steam platform. As one of the largest VR gaming platforms on the Steam platform, statistics on its connected VR headsets are of a reference value.
Since February 2021, Steam added the Oculus Quest 2 category to its statistics for the first time. Apart from a decline in August, Oculus Quest 2 has maintained a strong upward trend every month.
In December 2021, the share of Oculus Quest 2 rose from 36.32% to 39.62%, a record high. Other devices, such as Pico and HTC, have almost no major changes.
Will Oculus Quest 2, which created the Christmas VR boom in the United States, become a "killer" hardware like the iPhone? Are consumer VR headsets on the eve of the explosion?
Guo Cheng, president of STEPVR, a domestic VR technology research and development, and hardware equipment service provider, said in an interview with Zhixi: "The iPhone is a computing terminal based on a mobile phone, but the VR headset itself has no rigid needs, and will it become the rigid needs of users in the future? The product depends on how often users use it."
He mentioned that for the consumer VR market, how many times users have used Oculus Quest 2 in the second and third quarters of 2021 may be more important than the surge in users in a certain period of time.
A related industry person also said that Oculus Quest 2 currently has a monopoly in the US market and even the global market. Except for some manufacturers in the domestic market that have begun to increase the consumer-grade VR headset track, Oculus Quest 2 has almost no rivals. "Oculus Quest 2 has a lot of advantages in terms of cost performance, hardware facilities, and content ecology."
But he also said that on the other hand, this phenomenon also reveals that the current VR market development is still unbalanced. China and the United States are developing faster, but overall VR headsets have not yet formed a global outbreak trend.
Moreover, he also mentioned that the current advantages of Oculus Quest 2 are not irreplaceable. With the participation of different players, Oculus Quest 2 may soon be replaced.
At present, whether it is Sony's announcement of a new PS VR or Apple's entry into the VR headset market, more and more players are participating, and a new situation may be formed.
Conclusion: Harvesting the Christmas battlefield, Meta becomes the biggest winner
Meta’s VR headset Oculus Quest 2 "rides on" the shareholder spirit of Christmas to expand its audience. Behind Oculus's top-ranking also means that today's demand for VR equipment is in a stage of rapid growth.
Although Oculus Quest 2 opened up some new users at Christmas, from the perspective of the overall consumer VR headset market, VR headsets are far from exploding.
It is worth noting that in the era of social media, Meta Software Family Bucket has almost always harvested a lot of traffic. After Oculus reached the top of the list, Meta has strengthened Meta's control over social networks, and even began to lay the foundation for the next generation of Internet social networks.
On the other hand, the key to the success of Oculus Quest 2 is not without trace. The rich content ecology, constantly updated system services, cost-effective hardware facilities and effective publicity strategies have all become its Christmas hits. One of the important factors.
Successful cases are already in front of us. The domestic Spring Festival is also coming soon. Whether the domestic VR market can reproduce successful cases in China, and which manufacturers can be the domestic "breakers", we will continue to pay attention.
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