Meta says the number of active Quest users hit an all-time-high in 2025, and more than 100 store apps made over $1 million gross revenue.
“The rumors of the death of VR have been greatly exaggerated”, Meta’s Director of Games Chris Pruett declared at GDC 2026.
Of course, Pruett’s declaration comes two months after Meta shut down three of its acquired VR game studios, conducted significant layoffs at a fourth, and canceled the Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel. But while the company has confirmed this as a strategy shift, it’s making clear that it’s far from giving up on VR, and that the idea that VR is in decline is false.
2025 In Review
In a session at the conference, Pruett provided six key points when recapping how 2025 went for the Quest platform and ecosystem:
- Record Usage: “Quest usage has been growing year over year, and in 2025 we hit our all-time highest numbers of unique users ever in our history.”
- Store Revenue: Pruett says Horizon Store revenue was “up very slightly year over year” compared to 2024, but cites an analyst study to note that overall games industry growth was 1%, and points out that 2024 was a new headset year while 2025 was not.
- Revenue Type Split: paid app sales remain the “largest revenue driver”, Pruett claims, but in-app-payments grew 10%.
- Success Stories: Pruett says over 100 titles on Meta’s store generated over $1 million in gross revenue in 2025. He claims the types of games which generated this $1+ million revenue were “diverse”, giving these 3 examples:
- UG, a free-to-play Early Access title popular with teenagers.
- Hard Bullet, a $20 physics-based sandbox shooter that first launched on PC VR, before being ported to Quest 3.
- The Thrill Of The Fight 2, a $20 boxing simulator.
- Horizon+: Passing 1 million subscribers, Pruett says Meta’s Horizon+ subscription program paid out almost $20 million to participating developers in 2025.
- Oculus Publishing: Pushing back on the perception that it’s no longer funding VR titles, Pruett says his games publishing arm “helped ship over 140 games, and have more shipping this year”.
Quest User Cohorts
In guidance to developers, Pruett suggested that as VR has become increasingly mainstream, distinct Quest user “cohorts” have emerged, each with “their own play patterns, tastes, and interests”.
He pointed to three distinct types developers should be aware of:
- Teens, the “most active audience using Quest”, where discovery of content happens outside the headset, such as on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. These platforms are an absolutely vital marketing channel, Pruett says.
- VR Elites, the early adopter gamers who Meta says “drove much of the ecosystem in the Quest 2 era”. Pruett says this group is “spending less than they used to”, and suggests that this is due to wider macroeconomic factors. I suspect some UploadVR readers will push back on that suggestion.
- Mainstream Adults, a very small group today who “purchase VR as a TV replacement first, then discover that it can also play video games”. According to Pruett, this group loves Horizon+ and prefers to play games seated with hand tracking, rather than controllers.
As Teens Become Adults
Looking into the future of the platform, Pruett suggested that “the teens of today are the core gamers of tomorrow, probably”.
As those teens age and are “exposed to more sophisticated media, such as R-rated movies and more challenging books”, their taste in VR games should also mature, Pruett believes, while their core interest in virtual reality as a technology and gaming platform will remain.
“My conjecture, and it is only conjecture, is that sophistication, polish, and production quality become more important to young audiences as they age up. Their interest in social, unpredictable, co-op and competitive online multiplayer games with serendipitous physics and lore they can explore outside of the game is likely to remain, but their expectations for polish and quality are, I suspect, going to go up.”
If Pruett’s conjecture pans out, that would be good news for VR enthusiasts hoping for more traditional hardcore gaming to return as the primary focus for the VR content space – though as Pruett notes, it is only conjecture.
