Valve’s long running Steam Survey has been one of the most transparent data sources for gauging which VR headsets are the most used. Now the company says it’s revamping the way it collects data to more accurately count VR headsets in use on Steam.
Although Steam represents just one of several major VR platforms, it’s the only one of the bunch that transparently presents data about which VR headsets users are using via the Steam Survey which collects data about hardware used by the Steam population. The data helps developers and the rest of the VR industry understand important trends which can inform development, marketing, support, and more. Our last major analysis of the Survey data is here.
Valve tells Road to VR that it’s revamping the way it collects data about VR headsets used on Steam, which should increase the accuracy of the figures in the Survey. The company says that both wireless and less common headsets will now be represented in the data.
Previously, the company explained, VR headsets were counted by the Survey only if they were plugged in via USB at the time the data was collected. The new method will allow SteamVR to report to the Survey any headsets that have been used by the system in the last month, regardless of whether they are plugged in at the time of data collection.
Valve expects the change will result in a bump in the number of headsets counted in the survey. While the change in data collection hasn’t happened yet, Valve has already tweaked the Survey in a way that shows headsets being used on Steam which never previously appeared in the data, including Pimax headsets and PlayStation VR (which can be used with Steam via some third-party workarounds).
We’ll see the biggest changes when the Survey rolls over to the next month; at last count, it shows that 1.01% of Steam users used a VR headset in February.