2023 was an excellent year for VR games, and 2024 will even surpass it in terms of quality and especially quantity.
Since October, the number of releases has increased so much that even we are struggling to keep up. Our inboxes are overflowing with announcements of new VR games and updates to existing titles. At times, it feels like developers have been waiting two years or more to release their products at the same time.
The timing is no coincidence: The low-cost Meta Quest 3S was released in mid-October, and VR studios are naturally hoping for a bumper holiday season. Of course, it would be foolish not to take advantage of this unique opportunity.
There are currently rumors that game sales are not as strong as some established VR studios had hoped for with the launch of Quest 3S. Generally, two factors are being cited: the merging of the App Lab and the Quest Store, which has eliminated curation, and Meta's recommendation system, which is said to prioritize Horizon Worlds content over third-party titles that studios have been working on for years. Both of these factors could have led to lower visibility in the Horizon Store and therefore lower sales.
Another possible factor for the alleged decline in sales could be that Meta is currently throwing so many high-quality VR games at new customers for free that they have no reason to buy new VR games, which of course hurts the ecosystem.
There are some city builders out and more mixed reality games coming. It will be interesting to see if we get any more actually different games.