Quest 3 & 3S usage on SteamVR surged in August, according to Valve's data. But is this an error, or was it due to the $250 sales and Xbox Edition?

On Valve's Steam Hardware & Software Survey, the relative share of "Meta Quest 3" usage increased by 6.99%, bringing it closer than ever to Quest 2.

I put Quest 3 in quotes because SteamVR also sees Quest 3S headsets as "Meta Quest 3" when using Meta's official Quest Link feature and Guy Godin's Virtual Desktop. As far as we can tell, the "Meta Quest 3S" entry only represents Quest 3S headsets connected using Valve's official Steam Link.

As such, the most accurate thing we can say here is that the Quest 3 family of headsets seemingly saw significant PC VR usage growth in August, and that together they now represent just under 30% of SteamVR.

We should also note that 6.99% is one of the largest single-month surges we've ever seen, and could simply represent a data collation error, or a change to the way that Valve collects data. However, there could be another explanation.

At the very end of June, Meta and Microsoft launched the Quest 3S Xbox Limited Edition. Within three days, it had sold out from the Meta Store, and Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth has claimed the company was surprised by the demand.

Further, in July the regular edition of Quest 3S went on sale for $250 ($50 off) twice. The first time was for Amazon Prime Day, which Walmart matched, and the second was on the Meta Store for four days near the end of July.

It's possible that in August, enough of these new Quest 3S buyers connected their headset to a gaming PC to cause a noticeable spike in the headset's relative usage share, and to cause a minor rebound in the decline of overall SteamVR usage.

Overall, since Valve started recording any headset used on SteamVR in the past month rather than just currently connected via USB at the time of the survey in April 2020, the percentage of Steam users using a VR headset of any kind on their PC has declined.

This time period has also seen a massive increase in the number of Chinese Steam users. Headsets like Meta Quest and Valve Index aren't officially sold in China, and a huge portion of Chinese Steam usage is believed to come from PC gaming cafes, where a headset wouldn't be connected ever. So at UploadVR we also adjust the data to account for the increase in Chinese Steam users.

But even after doing so, overall VR usage on Steam has remained stagnant over the past five years, relative to the growth of PC gaming in general.

The reasons for this are open to debate, and likely complex, but that it has coincided with a massive increase in standalone VR usage suggests it's something inherent to PC VR or the habits and desires of PC gamers in general.

It's unclear what, if anything, could see SteamVR usage grow in the foreseeable future. Over the past four years Valve has repeatedly confirmed that it's working on a new headset, strongly hinting that it will have a focus on wireless streaming from your PC, but we don't yet know when it might arrive, nor what kind of price it will target.