VR Gaming Statistics About the Most Popular Genres, Meta Quest Store, Game Pricing & More
Oculus/Meta/Facebook are very secretive about their data. There’s very little information about how developers/publishers could get their app onto the official Quest Store. Right now the only way to get onto the official Quest Store is to be “chosen.” There’s no application process.
On top of that, there’s virtually no information regarding pricing, popular genres, modes (multiplayer/singleplayer/co-op), and sales volume so developers/publishers/marketers are often left in the dark.
Luckily we run a semi-popular Quest Store search engine used by 5,000 people and I’m happy to share the data I have which I hope can prove useful to developers.
How the search engine works:
People use “tags” to filter through stuff they want. So lets say they want a multiplayer shooter game. They select the “shooter” genre and the “multiplayer” game mode and it’ll show all multiplayer shooter games on the Quest Store (including App Lab games).
If people click on a tag, it means people are actively searching for apps in that genre. Using this data, we can see what the popular genres in the metaverse/VR are.
On top of that, through the Quest Store API, we can look at the data that’s currently available on the Quest Store and perform some analysis to get insights regarding ratings and number of ratings which could be used as an estimate for sales volume.
Here’s the data I’ve analyzed:
Oculus Quest Store Statistics 2022
Number of games on the Quest Store:
As of early 2022, there are about 1155 games on the Quest Store.
- 333 are official Quest Store games
- 822 are App Lab games
Here are the distribution of genres from each store:
Official Quest Store vs. App Lab Sales
| Metric | Official Quest Store | App Lab |
|---|---|---|
| Average Number of Reviews | 1523 | 52.86 |
| Median Number of Reviews | 536 | 7 |
| Average Rating | 4.04 | 3.87 |
| Median Rating | 4.15 | 4.18 |
| Average VR Game Price | $14.75 | $5.21 |
The overall average VR game price is $7.96 (including free games) and $14.5 (excluding free games). This might seem pretty low, but there are a lot of VR ‘tech demos’ out there which cost $0.99-$9.99.
What Are the Top 10 Most Clicked Tags?
Through our Quest Store search engine, we can see the number of times people clicked on each tag. Let’s explore the data and see which were the top 10 most popular tags:
The most alarming thing for a VR enthusiast is that the “comfortable” tag is clicked so highly. This means people are actively seeking for games that don’t cause motion sickness. Developers should take note of this. VR motion sickness affects ~60% of the population and a large percentage never overcome it.
Another interesting thing to note is “360 non-gaming experiences” is the most popular genre (nearly tied with shooters). This goes to show that the VR audience isn’t interested in just gaming.
Other data:
- $0 USD/FREE games are the most searched.
- Multiplayer and co-op are immensely popular.
- People like to filter games based on rating scores of 4.5+
- “Shooters” is the most popular genre.
- There’s a good amount of interest in App Lab titles (although don’t mistake this for buyer intent).
VR Multiplayer Statistics
Multiplayer has always been popular, but it’s especially true in VR, there is more emphasis on the social aspect of gaming.
Out of all the people searching for different game modes, 82% of clicks were to “multiplayer” or “co-op” tags.
Most Popular VR Genres
The most popular VR genre is “shooters.” No surprise there, as shooters are extremely popular in flatscreen gaming too. What’s interesting is:
- “360 non-gaming experiences” is nearly as popular as shooters.
- Puzzle games are very popular in VR. Much more than flatscreen gaming. Same with art/creativity apps and games.
- “news and information,” “media player,” “productivity,” and “education” apps are all within the middle – almost as popular as RPGs
- shortly below that is “documentary & history”
- “utility” sees some clicks but not much
What’s not popular:
- Arcade
- Casual
- Travel
Genre vs. Average Number of Ratings
App Lab Games Only
The most popular App Lab games are:
- Gorilla Tag (11,000 ratings)
- Pavlov Shack (5,000 ratings)
- Sport Mode (3458 ratings)
- Battle Talent (1058 ratings)
- Ancient Dungeon Beta (944 ratings)
- Gym Class (911 ratings)
- Deisim (592 ratings)
Gorilla Tag and Pavlov were removed from this analysis due to being outliers.
Now the results look more like the above “most popular VR genres.”
Action, adventure, shooters are near the top. Fighting is also quite popular.
The results won’t be the same, since it’ll also depend on the quality of games that’s available.
Fighting games are at the top due to some great games that exist like Ancient Dungeon Beta (which is now added to the official store) and Battle Talent.
Important thing to note: After removing outliers from the results, the average number of reviews for App Lab games is only 29.
Price Tag Clicks
Apart from $39.99, it seems $9.99 is the most profitable price point for developers.
$39.99 is reserved for big franchises or AAA titles like Resident Evil 4.
Price vs. Number of Ratings
| Price | Average No. of Ratings | Sample Size |
|---|---|---|
| $9.99 | 67 | 73 |
| $19.99 | 60 | 27 |
| $14.99 | 40 | 36 |
| FREE | 32 | 437 |
| $5.99 | 16 | 17 |
| $2.99 | 10 | 31 |
| $4.99 | 9.82 | 71 |
| $3.99 | 6.19 | 26 |
| $1.99 | 5.83 | 18 |
| $0.99 | 4.3 | 10 |
This data suggests something different.
Although $9.99 games bring the most sales, $19.99 bring the most profits. Of course, there’s one thing we have to consider and that’s the quality of the games:
The $19.99 games have a much higher average rating than the $9.99 games which could explain why it brings this much sales.
Regardless, both data suggest that to maximimze profits, developers shouldn’t undervalue their game.
My advice would be don’t be afraid to price your game at what you think it’s worth. Obviously $29.99 and $39.99 are reserved for bigger titles and well known developers.
But after that, $9.99 and $19.99 are the best price points for indie developers. Price accordingly to quality and how much content your game has.
If your game only has $2.99 worth of content, then it’s better to flesh out the game some more and price it at $9.99.
Comfort
The “comfortable” tag is one of the most used tags.
This aligns with our previous data showing that around 60% of people experience VR motion sickness and around 32% of those are never able to grow their VR legs.
Developers should take note of this and create games that has a teleportation locomotion option. I frequently get comments like this:
“Being able to filter by locomotion options is really nice. Smooth loco makes me nauseous so fast it’s basically not worth it, so knowing easily which games have Teleport Locomotion is really helpful!”
Other things such as vignettes can also help.
Age Filters
Overall, age isn’t too important, but the VR audience is most interested in 18+ content.
There’s also some parents looking for suitable content for their kids.
This data was collected and analyzed by Winston Nguyen on January 2022. Contact hello@vrheaven.io for more information.
