The Oculus Rift, created by Facebook-owned Oculus VR, launched on March 28th, 2016, with the HTC and Valve-created Vive headset launching just a week later on April 5th, 2016. Now with yesterday’s launch of the Oculus Touch motion controllers, both platforms are capable of hand-tracked, roomscale, virtual reality experiences that can truly transport you to faraway and fictional worlds of excitement and wonder. Throw in the releases of the PlayStation VR, the PlayStation 4 Pro, the Google Daydream platform, and countless other advancements and it’s clear that 2016 was truly the year that VR began its mainstream adoption.
Now, almost exactly 8 months after the Vive’s release, out of over 25,000 total pieces of software on the platform, Steam is now officially home to over 1,000 games, experiences, and applications with official VR support of some kind. That includes VR-only titles, apps that got VR updates after releasing without VR, and any other types of experiences that allows you to use a VR headset — regardless of manufacturer. It’s a major milestone. Just a few months ago in July, we reported on the fact that there were over 400 titles, meaning that approximately 600 have been added in the 5 months since then.
In October, it was stated at Steam Dev Days that over 1,000 new VR users were entering the platform each and every day. The accuracy and details of that statement are still unclear, but it seems safe to say that the industry’s growth has been strong as of late. The studios behind Raw Data and The Gallery: Call of the Starseed have each made over $1 million, for example.
Now, let’s break down those numbers a little bit. As of the time of this writing, of the 1,006 apps on Steam that support VR interfaces, 963 of them support the HTC Vive, 810 of them officially support the Oculus Rift, and 278 of them support OSVR. Of all of the 1,006 apps, 818 use tracked motion controllers and 709 support room-scale functionality. Of the 1,006 apps, I’d wager a healthy majority of them are demos or otherwise short, experimental experiences. But content is content and the growth is strong, regardless.
As we move into 2017 with more and more new VR titles releasing each and every week, it’s only a matter of time before we cross that 2,000 app mark.
