In a seemingly unprompted tweet this week, Ultrawings 2 developer Bit Planet Games said that despite building its latest game with a focus on the PC VR platform, the studio has seen significantly more sales volume on Quest 2.
Adding to a growing heap of evidence that the addressable audience of VR players on Quest has significantly outpaced those on PC VR, developer Bit Planet Games said this week that its latest title, Ultrawings 2, has sold 10 times more on Quest 2.
The tweet, which not responding to a specific thread, concluded that “stand-alone VR is far more successful than PCVR.”
PCVR players, we aren’t haters. We made Ultrawings 2 thinking of you FIRST! It’s true! But the reality is the Q2 version has made close to 10x what the PCVR has made. That’s just the truth. Players have spoken. Stand-alone VR Is far more successful than PCVR.
— Bit Planet Games (@BitPlanetGames) July 24, 2022
As the Quest platform has proliferated and pulled a growing VR audience into the fold, there’s been plenty of accusations levied at developers by PC VR players who claim that a game has been ‘watered down’ due to the need to run on Quest, compared to what it could have been if targeting the high performance of PC VR from the outset.
For some titles that may indeed be true, though in this case Bit Planet Games claims Ultrawings 2 was designed first and foremost for the PC VR platform. Despite that, the studio has clearly seen most of its success from the Quest audience.
The motivation for the studio’s declaration isn’t entirely clear. It may be to fend off a common criticism of the game itself, an effort to shed light on a truth that other VR developers should know, throwing shade at Valve (which runs the leading PC VR platform, Steam), or any number of other potential reasons.