According to the January 2020 data released from Valve’s Steam Survey, VR headset growth on Steam has taken its largest leap yet, with 1.31% of the population having headsets that were connected to their computers.

With a year-over-year increase of 43%, this beats out the earlier record that was set in January 2019 when monthly-connected headsets jumped to reach 0.91% for the very first time. As per the estimations made by the researchers, the number of monthly-connected headsets on Steam now stands at 1.6 million, a growth of more than 271,000 from the prior month.

With regards to the market share of individual headsets on Steam, Rift S reached almost a quarter (24.34%) of headsets in use, at a rise of 5.88%. Rift, at 30.36% and Vive, at 26.91%, both saw declines.

An earlier report released in April from Parks Associates’, titled ‘Virtual Reality: The Evolving Ecosystem’, found that consumer-reported familiarity with VR technology had stayed at approximately 25% of US broadband households between the year 2017 and 2018. The report found that among consumers surveyed who either own or are aware of VR, more than half (54%) use their headset, or will make use of it for gaming purposes. Billy Nayden, the research analyst at Parks Associates, said: “62% of US broadband households play video games, and while gamers are a passionate market segment, they can be limited in scope, which has stalled adoption of VR to a wider audience.”

CCS Insight argued in a December research report that the market for extended reality products, comprising VR and AR devices, will see an increase of 21% in 2019 to just over 10m devices. The industry analyst firm also noted that the variety of VR devices is growing and it expects new products in 2020 from HTC, Oculus, among others. CCS Insight also forecasted that China will play an important role in the growth of the VR market.

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