By all accounts the launch of Oculus Quest 2 in October 2020 has been a big success, from pre-orders surpassing Facebook’s expectations to Superdata’s latest research showing the standalone sector saw 19% growth. The latest news on its popularity finds that more people are active on the platform, quickly outstripping the original headset.
In a new blog post, Andrew Bosworth, Head of Facebook Reality Labs – who has held AMA’s via Instagram recently – said that: “Oculus Quest 2 is our fastest-growing VR headset, thanks to the convergence of leading VR form factors and the content built by our developer community.” He went onto say: “Quest 2 surpassed the original Quest’s monthly active people in less than 7 weeks.”
As usual, Facebook hasn’t released any actual figures so there’s no way of telling how many this actually is. Bosworth did go onto say: “more people are using it to stay fit, play games with friends, and collaborate for work…with more women using Quest 2 than any of our previous headsets.”
He doesn’t just look back over the last three months, revealing a few things to expect during 2021. “We’ll offer more options and control over how to show up in VR, including persona and privacy controls,” Bosman adds, all part of the big Facebook account login furore which saw the end of Oculus accounts.
Currently available as an invite-only beta, Facebook Horizon was also mentioned, indicating the social platform will see its official release in 2021. It was debuted during Oculus Connect 6 (OC6) in 2019 and since the beta launched early last year those early testers have been building content so that new users have got places to explore before they start creating their own worlds.
With pandemic lockdowns mostly continuing into the near future, online social and work interactions are going be even more essential than ever, of which Oculus Quest 2 and Facebook Horizon will play an important part. For further updates from Facebook Reality Labs, keep reading VRFocus.