Valve’s second mighty expensive, yet mighty impressive VR headset, the Steam Frame, launched in the latter half of September, meaning October was the first full month where players could actually use it. The latest Steam Hardware Survey suggests a rather big bump in usage for Valve’s VR headset this past month.
In September, the Steam Frame accounted for just 0.41% of VR headset usage. In October, that number jumped to 4.13%. That means it surpassed the Oculus Rift S, Sony PS VR2, HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality (which is a platform, as opposed to a single headset), the first Oculus Rift and Bigscreen Beyond. It is now the sixth most popular VR headset, sitting just .37% behind the Pico 4, and a hefty 24.14% behind the Meta Quest 3.
The 3.72% increase for the Steam Frame is the biggest jump upwards in October, and the biggest tumble was taken by the Oculus Quest 2, which lost 3.57%.
The Steam Frame officially released on September 18, with preorders going live on September 14, but that doesn’t mean buyers got their hands on the headset on the day it went live. So the bump can not only be partially attributed to continued sales over October, but also to shipping times.
It’s also worth noting that both the 256 GB and 1 TB models are backordered, meaning even if you sign up for one now, you will simply be put on a waiting list. That means Frame usage is unlikely to entirely stagnate from here.
|
Headset |
Percentage |
|
27.27% (+0.36) |
|
|
22.23% (-3.57) |
|
|
11.04% (-0.04) |
|
|
9.9% (-0.93) |
|
|
4.5% (-0.25) |
|
|
4.13% (+3.72) |
|
|
3.26% (-0.14) |
|
|
2.41% (+0.1) |
|
|
2% (-0.26) |
|
|
Windows Mixed Reality |
1.79% (-0.06) |
Given the Steam Frame has enjoyed such a large bump even with customers struggling to get their hands on the headset, this suggests the VR market on Steam isn’t huge. Though it is worth taking these stats with a pinch of salt.
The Steam Hardware Survey is an opt-in survey Valve takes every month. This means it only looks at a fraction of Steam users to get general statistics. This is why stats tend to change a tad each month. For instance, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 is currently the most popular graphics card in the survey, but it saw a 0.08% increase last month. The RTX 4060 saw a downward shift of 0.40%, pushing it below the RTX 3060.
As such, the Hardware Survey can only ever give a rough reading of usage each month, but it still seems like a good sign for Valve’s latest bit of hardware.