Is the Meta Quest a Wii U-sized flop? Software numbers suggest it might be

Enlarge / Meta's estimated Quest software sales are worryingly close to those for the Wii U at a similar point in its life. (credit: Ars / Kyle Orland)

During Wednesday's Meta Connect keynote presentation, the company announced a new milestone for its line of standalone Quest headsets: $2 billion in lifetime revenue from Quest apps and software since the platform launched back in 2019. On first glance, that's a pretty big number that suggests the formation of a pretty healthy VR software ecosystem.

But looked at in context, Ars' analysis suggests the Quest software market is roughly the same size as that for the Wii U at a similar point in its short life cycle. That's not a great comparison for Meta to be facing, since the Wii U was rightly considered an embarrassing flop by the standards of the video game market.

Comparing apples to... VR apples

In making that comparison, Ars compared Wii U software unit sales numbers from Nintendo's own quarterly reports to estimated software sales numbers based on Meta's sporadic public announcements of Quest revenue milestones. To convert revenue numbers to unit sales estimates for the Quest, Ars divided total Quest revenue by the median sale price for best-selling Quest software ($19.99) and the mean sale price for that same software ($17.60).