News Bits

40 Quest Titles Report Over $10M in Revenue, Meta Says “giant correlation” Between Quality & Sales

Meta today revealed at Game Developers Conference (GDC) a fresh bit of insight into Quest Store stats.

The company says in a developer blog post there are now 500+ titles available on the Meta Quest Store, 40 of which have grossed over $10 million in revenue.

At Connect 2022 in October, the company reported that 33 titles out of the 400 apps on the Quest Store at the time had tipped over the $10 million mark. Since then, the Quest Store has ostensibly added around 100 games in the time span of around five months.

And it seems those high-earning games are picking up steam too. The number of titles at the $20-million mark has doubled year over year, Meta says.

As far as today’s stats tease go, Meta is most certainly counting all Quest apps and games on the store, and not just those targeting Quest 2 or Quest Pro. Notably, the company is sunsetting the original 2019 Quest soon.

Chris Pruett, Meta Director of Content Ecosystem and Head of Third-party Games, outlined a few key metrics in what’s performing best on Quest:

Top game genres include multiplayer competitive, physics combat, horror adventure, fitness and workout, social collaborative, and shooters.

Growth categories include single-player narrative adventure, boxing/golf and sports, RPG, simulation, and survival.

Referring to game revenue, Pruett says there’s a “giant correlation between quality and sales.”

“The cohorts of Quest customers over time, the ones coming in recently, look very different than the early enthusiasts,” Pruett said to the GDC crowd. “Their expectations are like those of a modern game console.’

Pruett doesn’t think we’re “anywhere close to the upper-bound for visual quality and game complexity on Quest 2—partially because we have some awesome tech that most of you aren’t using yet.” Continuing, Pruett concludes that “increased revenue potential on the platform is what’s going to drive quality.”

Despite the blogpost announce, the company hasn’t revealed any change in gross app revenue since Connect 2022. Meta is still stating it’s generated “over $1.5 billion” in revenue from Quest games, tallied from the platform’s founding in 2019 to October 2022.

We have boots on the ground at GDC 2023 in San Francisco, so we’re sure to learn more while we’re there. Make sure to check back soon for all things VR/AR gaming from this year’s GDC,

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Sports Training App ‘REZZIL PLAYER’ Coming to PSVR 2 Soon

News Bits, psvr 2 sports, psvr 2 sports games, rezzil, rezzil player, VR Game, vr sports, vr sports training / Ryan Harris / February 17, 2023

Indie VR studio REZZIL today announced it’s bringing REZZIL PLAYER, the VR sports training game, to PSVR 2 soon.

Initially launched on Quest in 2021 and later brought to SteamVR headsets in 2022, Rezzil Player offers up a growing collection of sports training games that aim to improve performance and reaction times across sports like football, soccer, and basketball. The immersive training game now boasts over 160 levels and 40 items of sports kit for avatars.

The studio announced Rezzil Player is officially coming to PSVR 2 during its launch window, which PlayStation says extends into March.

The studio says the PSVR 2 version is slated to use the next-gen headset’s advanced features, including haptic feedback to feel the impact of a ball on their head, and eye-tracking for foveated rendering.

“We are thrilled to announce the release of REZZIL PLAYER on PlayStation VR 2,” said Gareth Thatcher, Director at Rezzil. “Combining our virtual and physical sports training games with the power of PlayStation 5 is something we are proud of and excited to bring to a new audience.”

Rezzil Player is set to launch on PSVR 2 for $10 “within the official launch window,” the studio says, which PlayStation has defined as starting at the headset’s launch on February 22nd leading into March.

We’ll keep our eyes peeled for a more precise launch date and PlayStation Store links in the coming weeks.

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PSVR 2 Team Shooter ‘Firewall Ultra’ Confirmed for 2023 Release

fce, firewall ultra, firewall vr, first contact entertainment, News Bits, VR Game, vr shooter, vr team shooter / Ryan Harris / February 17, 2023

Firewall Ultra, the team shooter exclusive to PSVR 2, doesn’t have a release date yet, however developers First Contact Entertainment confirmed with Road to VR it’s indeed releasing sometime this year. In the meantime, the studio has revealed a new character to its lineup of Contractors.

Firewall Ultra is the upcoming sequel to the well-recieved squad-based shooter Firewall Zero Hour, which launched on the original PSVR in 2018. While we were hoping to hear news of the sequel’s actual release date, it appears we’ll have to wait a little longer, as the studio announced it’s confirmed for 2023 release.

We didn’t know when it was going to launch when it was initially announced back in September. At the time we speculated it may even be a launch day title, but now given the indefinite ‘2023’ launch window, it seems we’ll be left waiting.

PSVR 2 is set to launch on February 22nd, and to keep the hype for what could become the platform’s most prominent team shooter, the studio also revealed a new character to the lineup. Here’s what First Contact says about the new character, Havoc:

Havoc joins the fray in Firewall Ultra as a brand-new Contractor. With a background as a decorated former elite military operative, he is well-trained, well-conditioned, and well-equipped to get the job done—despite his cocky attitude. He was kicked out of the program after a big disagreement with a superior and is now looking to make a name for himself in the world of private contracting.

In Firewall Ultra, his Conditioned skill increases his resistance to bullet damage and deploys a mine once he’s eliminated from battle.

In the meantime, you can wishlist the PSVR 2 exclusive game here.

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PSVR 2 is Getting a Version of Sega Dreamcast Classic ‘Cosmic Smash’ This Year

c-smash, c-smash vr, cosmic smash, cosmic smash vr, dreamcast, dreamcast vr, News Bits, VR Game / Blake Jones / February 15, 2023

Sega’s futuristic block-breaker, which you might remember from its launch on Dreamcast in 2001 or in arcades throughout Europe and Japan, is being reimagined for PSVR 2 with C-Smash VRS.

The game is bringing an immersive twist to Cosmic Smash’s low gravity squash-meets-blockbreaker gameplay, including single player, co-op, and 1v1 multiplayer modes—that’s what the ‘VRS’ stands for, both virtual reality and versus.

Besides bringing the futuristic racket sport to VR, C-Smash VRS is also set to rekindle some long dormant memories with its thumping OST, which seems to be inspired by the original’s ambient techno score; new tracks are being composed by DJ Ken Ishii (Rez Infinite) and Danalogue (The Comet is Coming, Soccer 96).

The game is currently under development by indie studio RapidEyeMovers, with the IP licensed from Sega. The studio says it’s working with VR veterans Wolf & Wood (The Last Worker, The Exorcist: Legion VR), and designers Cory Schmitz (Rez Infinite, Sound Shapes) and Arkotype (Polytron) to bring it to PSVR 2 later this year.

While we don’t have a launch date yet, a free demo of C-Smash VRS for PSVR 2 is coming to the PlayStation Store on March 23rd. In the meantime, you can wishlist the game here.

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Meta Optimizes Quest Developer Tool for Apple’s Mac M-series Chips

mqdh, mqdh m1, mqdh m2, mqdh mac, mqdh mac os, News, News Bits, VR development / Ryan Harris / February 1, 2023

Last week Meta released the latest version of the Meta Quest Developer Hub tool which has been optimized to work natively on Apple’s M-series chips for better performance.

The Meta Quest Developer Hub (MQDH) is a collection of tools to make VR development easier for Quest developers. In addition to giving devs an easy way to manage their headset and the files on it, it also provides access to Meta’s various VR SDKs, and includes tools to profiling and optimizing VR applications.

While MQDH has supported MacOS since it launched back in late 2020, the latest version v3.2, is just now getting around to supporting Apple’s modern M-series chips which the company uses in all of its most recent computers. The tool now has native support for the ARM64 architecture of the M-series chips, improving booting time and performance.

It’s a somewhat curious update considering this is the only major change in MQDH v3.2, and considering that VR developers working on MacOS seem to be a tiny minority compared to those on Windows.

There’s no telling exactly why Meta chose to do this now—rather than say, months if not years ago. Possibilities range from the insignificant (perhaps a handful of Meta’s internal VR devs work on Mac and wanted the extra performance) to the strategic (maybe Meta wants to improve the experience of Mac VR developers in an attempt to sway them away from Apple’s long-rumored headset.

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Quest 2 Update Will Boost Performance and Automatically Make Apps Run Better

Meta Quest 2, News, News Bits, Quest 2, quest 2 performance boost / Ryan Harris / December 24, 2022

Meta has announced that an upcoming Quest 2 update will unlock additional performance that developers can tap into to make their games look better. Some apps will benefit from the increased performance automatically.

Meta announced this week that the latest updates to Quest 2 will allow the headset to boost the GPU processing power available to developers from 490Mhz to 525MHz (a 7% increase). That might not sound like much, but with developers limited to the power of a mobile processor, every bit of additional performance counts.

Meta says “no integration or coding is needed to start reaping the benefits of this improvement,” as the headset’s dynamic clocking system will automatically boost the GPU speed if it detects that an app needs it. For apps with occasional stuttering, this little boost could smooth things out.

For apps using the headset’s dynamic foveation capability (which blurs the area in the peripheral view to improve performance), Meta says the headset will boost the processor to the new 525MHz speed to maintain visual quality before blurring the peripheral area. That means apps which previously relied on cranking up the blur during demanding scenes should look better in those cases than if they didn’t have access to the extra power.

Meta says the Quest 2 performance increase is technically available as of v47, but requires a bit of a workaround to enable it each time. As of the Quest 2 v49 update the performance boost will be unlocked without any caveats.

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