Meta has sold 20+ million Quest devices making it more popular than Xbox.

And most of those billions have gone towards acquiring app developers, game studios and Meta Labs.

They deserve a little more credit than building a Second Life clone.

As of 2021, Xbox installed base was 63 million units: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/89000/microsoft-gives-xbox-co...

But sales have been declining every year from 7.6m in 2017 to 0.35m in 2021: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1085604/annual-unit-sale...

So it seems popularity is decreasing.

That's the Xbox One, which released in 2013. They released a new console in 2020 (Series X) which has sold 20m units in 3 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_cons...

I don't see where these Quest devices have gone to though, who and where is the market? Because even though I run around the tech circles where people are eager to be early adopters, own multiple tech gadgets, etc. I still don't see a single home with a Quest device. I see multiple Xbox and Playstation devices but no Quest.

How can that be more popular than Xbox? Where are those 20 million devices in use? Do people hide them?

Since the iPhone release i have seen about 10 people with one. Wikipedia says Apple has sold more than 2.2 billion of them. Do people hide them?

Considering the context presented (the sampling of very tech forward people who really enjoy advanced gadgets), then OP's question makes a lot of sense.

Your comparison is a bit weird. I have seen more than 10 iPhones today, and all I did was walk to Starbucks and back.

You live in a place that has many iPhone users

Exactly my initial point: I live in a place where a gadget such as the Quest should be found quite easily, yet I haven't seen one.

I've never seen a Meta Quest in my life and I must have seen hundreds if not thousands of Xboxes. Sorry but those numbers just don't add up. Who uses these quests and are some people buying them a dozen at a time? Because I know this is purely anecdotal but I really don't see where the household penetration is.

That comparison makes very little sense. Meta Quest is the best selling VR unit, maybe you should compare it with the best selling console? Nintendo Switch has sold more than a 100 million units. Not to mention that Xbox games also run on Windows - and that has a market reach way above 20 million decices.

The same internal presentation that discusses this 20+ million number also mentions huge problems in retention. People don't use their Quest very much nor very long.

Overall usage numbers are abysmal, and it is a flop. One of the major reasons why it is a flop is that even the people who really want it and actually buy it don't really have anything interesting to use it for.

Legless Second Life is a very good representative of the flop that the metaverse is.

If the Meta pivot was going as fantastic as you say it is, Mark wouldn't be going ballistic on his own employees.