Meta has sold nearly 20M Quest headsets, but retention struggles remain (2023)

Its odd to me, but I would describe VR as not addicting. Its a very fun experience when you are there, but I never really feel the pull to go back. Also, the amount of stuff you can do in VR is not much. People act like you can have a fake VR house and have apps on the wall in each room you walk through. Can't do that. I should be able to do scrolling RSS feeds on the walls of my room like a poster, but I can't do that yet. What about paper documents on the floor that you can point at and select and then MS Word opens? Any type of interaction like that is not there yet really.

Retention is always tough for new technologies. I remember when 3D printers were having their big splash and people were buying them like crazy, once they did a few prints it lost all the allure. Same thing with VR, I'd imagine.

I mean most videogames have dropped spit screen multiplayer from their featureset for years. Still a few holdouts I think.. mariocart/marioparty/smashbros I imagine .. though haven't tested all of those on the switch, i know kart at least still has ssmp and of course party.

So that couch co-op/battle situation is already rarer than it used to be, and the games that support it skew younger or are indy (lovers in a dangerous spacetime, etc)

Online multiplayer with each player having their own screen is much more popular these days it seems.

I certainly spent a lot of time playing couch co-op when I was a much younger man (nintendo64/playstation/saturn/xbox era and before .. let's here it for MULE on the c64) but that kind of gameplay seems to be fading with a few exceptions.

I have played some AR boardgame prototypes using the quest 3 and during the pandemic experimented with playing boardgames with friends in tabletop simulator, experimenting a few times with using my vr headset. They are still compelling situations.

In the case of the AR prototype, that was a shared space. Four of us in a room with our own quests but all observing a shared table that contained essentially a boardgame.

In the case of my pandemic online boardgaming, the presence of others is basically experienced the same as any multiplayer game where you might be on voice chat with the other players. VR or not.

I think the AR focus of the vision pro and the quest 3 might change this view you have a bit around many people in a room all with their 'own screen' but able to see 'through it' and put eyes on their opponents physical forms.

"Quest 2 appears to be the vast majority". Quest 1 and 2 cannot do mixed reality, you can compare them to a smartphone without a camera, you miss a lot of use cases and engagement

Bought a Quest 2 in 2022, I got a lot of use out of it initially (mostly played Pavlov Shack, SUPERHOT VR, and community-made ports of classic FPS games), then fell off using it after ~8 months. When I built my new PC I had a blast with it again, I blitzed through Half-Life Alyx and was hopping on a community VRChat meetup every weekend... Then I fell off again.

Messing about in VR and shooting has to be the most fun I've had with vidya since I was a kid, but it's the dedication required which kills it for me. I have to be in the right mood to go into my cupboard, take it out the box, connect it to my PC, and play about for a few hours – when I come home from work if I want to shoot some baddies it's way easier to sit down at my desk to do it. And I don't end up drenched in sweat at my PC.

The last time I picked it up was back in November for a VRChat meetup. It's a shame really because playing VR games is such a joy, but it's marred with each little roadbump to get there.