In his latest ask me anything (AMA) on Instagram, Vice President of Facebook Reality Labs Andrew Bosworth said he’s “convinced” that Facebook will reach its goal of 10 million VR users sooner than initially anticipated.
Back in 2019 at Oculus Connect, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that VR platforms would need to reach a threshold of around 10 million users in order to be a sustainable and profitable ecosystem for developers.
“Once we get to, and cross, this threshold [of 10 million users], we think the content and the ecosystem will just explode,” Zuckerberg said in the OC5 keynote speech. He then went on to announce the original Oculus Quest headset, which marked a huge shift in Facebook’s VR strategy, moving away from wired PC VR experiences and focusing predominantly on the new standalone Quest platform.
With the success of the original Quest and the seemingly even greater success of Quest 2, Bosworth is almost certain that the all-important 10 million threshold will be met earlier than the company expected. Here’s a transcription of his response and full answer:
When will Oculus have 10 million users?
Bosworth: You know, I’m not going to answer this question, because I don’t know the answer to it, but we are doing really well. When we set that goal and talked about it at Connect, we had a timeframe in mind that it would happen on, and I’m very convinced it’s going to happen earlier than we had initially expected.
Back in January, Zuckerberg said that Quest 2 was “on track to be the first mainstream virtual reality headset.” While he didn’t give any concrete sales numbers, a more recent recall listing revealed that 4 million Quest 2 facial interfaces (included with both the Quest 2 headset and the Fit Pack accessory kit) were shipped in the US. Although it’s still not a direct sales unit, the 4 million number does give us a rough ballpark of how many Quest 2s have shipped in the US.
Combined with sales of the original Quest headset, you can start to put together a picture of how Facebook might be heading towards 10 million users on the Quest platform sooner than it anticipated.
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