Oculus & Meta Quest VR Platforms

Meta Quest Platform

Meta’s Quest lineup (Quest, Quest 2, Quest Pro, and Quest 3) represents the leading standalone VR platform. These headsets are all-in-one wireless devices with inside-out tracking, meaning they don’t require a PC or external sensors. The Quest 2 in particular became a breakout success with over 20 million units sold as of early 2023​, making it “the most popular mainstream VR headset ever”​. 

From a technical standpoint, Quest headsets run on a customized Android-based OS (often called the Oculus or Meta Quest OS) and use mobile system-on-chip processors (Quest 2 and Quest Pro use the Snapdragon XR2, Quest 3 uses the XR2 Gen 2). 

This limits their raw graphical power compared to a high-end PC, but also makes them portable and user-friendly. 

Supported headsets 

The primary devices are Quest 2 (2020) and Quest 3 (2023) for consumers, and Quest Pro (2022) targeted at prosumers – all of which run the same apps via the Quest Store. (The older Rift line is PC-tethered and largely deprecated; Meta has pivoted fully to standalone.) 

Notably, Quest devices can act as PC VR headsets via Oculus Link or Air Link, letting users access SteamVR or Rift PC titles, but our focus here is the Quest ecosystem itself for game sales. 

Developer Tools & Pipeline 

Developing for Quest typically means building an Android APK using Unity or Unreal with the Oculus (Meta) VR SDK. Meta provides the Oculus Integration package for Unity and similar plugins for Unreal Engine, which include features like hand tracking, passthrough AR, and platform-specific APIs. 

However, Meta is increasingly aligned with OpenXR, allowing developers to write code once and deploy on Quest as well as other platforms with minimal changes​. Unity and Unreal’s built-in XR support can target Quest via OpenXR, with Meta-specific extensions available for optional features​. 

For testing, Meta’s Developer Hub software and device manager streamline deploying builds to a Quest over USB or Wi-Fi. The development process must account for mobile hardware limits: devs optimize texture sizes, poly counts, and use fixed foveated rendering, etc., to maintain performance on Quest’s 72–90Hz displays. 

Store Submission

Meta operates a curated Quest Store for official app distribution. Unlike Steam’s open model, Meta requires developers to pitch their apps for approval. This curation ensures a level of quality and marketability – beneficial for users, but a hurdle for indies. 

Many developers, especially early on, faced rejection from the main store if their title didn’t meet Meta’s content bar or if the library already had similar apps. To mitigate this, Meta introduced App Lab in 2021 as an alternative distribution channel. 

App Lab allows developers to publish Quest apps without full store approval, but these apps are essentially unlisted – users need a direct link or to search exact titles to find them. It’s a middle ground between full store release and sideloading. 

Speaking of sideloading, developers can also distribute builds directly (or via platforms like SideQuest – an unofficial app repository), which power users can install. However, Meta confirms that the vast majority of users stick to the official store; for example, SideQuest had under 0.4 million downloads versus 19 million for the official Oculus mobile app​. This means App Lab and sideloaded apps have significantly less exposure. 

In short, getting onto the main Quest Store yields far greater visibility and sales, but not every indie will clear that bar. 

Monetization Model

Meta’s store model is very similar to other app stores: a 30% cut on software sales goes to the platform​. (Meta famously took the same “App Store tax” they once criticized Apple for​.) This 30% applies to one-time purchases of games/apps. 

For in-app purchases or subscriptions, Meta’s cut ranges from 30% down to 15% for recurring subscriptions, depending on the product​. Developers keep the remaining revenue. Unlike some platforms, Meta doesn’t charge extra fees for SDK usage or development (in fact, they have incentives – e.g. covering the first $5M of Unreal Engine royalty costs for Quest developers​). 

The Quest Store’s financial reach has grown rapidly in a few years. By late 2023 Meta announced that Quest content has grossed over $2 billion in revenue since the platform’s 2019 launch​. This is a strong indicator of a healthy marketplace – for comparison, that figure doubled from $1B to $2B between 2022 and 2023 alone​. 

Top-selling Quest titles can earn millions; many indie studios have found surprising success on Quest once they passed the curation process. Meta also occasionally funds developers upfront (through programs like Oculus Start or publishing agreements) – this can involve covering development costs in exchange for timed exclusivity on Quest.

Audience & Market Reach

The Quest user base is currently the largest in VR. With nearly 20 million headsets sold across Quest 1 & 2​, there’s a sizable active user population looking for games. Quest 2 in particular brought a more casual, console-like audience into VR – people who might not own a gaming PC or be tech enthusiasts, but enjoy VR gaming and fitness. 

This has driven strong sales for accessible titles (for example, casual multiplayer games, rhythm games like Beat Saber, etc.). An indie game on the Quest Store has access to this captive audience. 

Moreover, Quest users can’t acquire content from elsewhere (aside from the niche App Lab/sideload channels), so they browse the Quest Store by default. The store itself features new releases and highlights, giving decent discoverability if Meta features your app.

Developers have reported that being on Quest often yields higher unit sales than on PC VR, due to the sheer number of active devices and the appetite for content. However, one must factor in that Quest players expect mobile-level pricing (many games are $10–$30) and some genres are saturated. 

Strengths & Weaknesses

The strength of the Quest platform lies in its mass-market reach and ease of use. For a developer, this means if you secure a spot on the Quest Store, you have a chance at high-volume sales and strong community engagement. 

The standalone nature also allows novel use cases (untethered room-scale experiences, VR fitness apps, etc.) that flourish on Quest. Additionally, Meta’s heavy investment in VR means continual improvements – e.g. the newer Quest models bring color passthrough for mixed reality, higher resolution, and better performance, enabling devs to create more advanced content over time. 

From a development pipeline perspective, Meta provides good support and documentation, and the hardware being uniform simplifies testing (no disparate PC configurations to worry about, just one set of specs per headset model). 

Cross-play with PC or PlayStation can be implemented in games (Meta doesn’t forbid it), which can extend a multiplayer game’s community beyond Quest. On the downside, entry into the ecosystem is gated. Indie devs face the initial hurdle of impressing Meta’s curation team – which can be subjective and not always transparent. Some great games only made it to App Lab, limiting their reach. This “walled garden” approach is in contrast to Steam or even Pico’s openness. 

Another weakness is the hardware limit: developers must often downscale their PC VR projects significantly to run on Quest. Not every high-end PC VR game can be ported; those that can (e.g. Medal of Honor VR or Red Matter 2) are technical achievements involving time and budget. 

So certain ambitious ideas might be not feasible on current standalone hardware. Additionally, Meta’s 30% cut and control over the platform can be seen as a drawback – though industry-standard, it’s still a significant share (something not lost on developers, as Meta’s own critique of Apple’s fees drew ire when Meta matched those fees​). 

Lastly, there’s platform risk: relying on Meta means dealing with their policies and shifts (for instance, the requirement of Facebook logins was a pain point they later reversed). Overall, Quest is the most lucrative platform today for many VR devs, but it comes with the strings of platform control and technical constraints of mobile VR. Successful developers often launch on Quest and PC to get the best of both worlds.