Quick tip on spin detection: When a company spokesperson claims their figures have "doubled" or even "quadrupled", but decline to give you specific, absolute numbers, make sure your antennae twitches furiously. So it is with Facebook's Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, recently making this claim about Oculus Quest 2 sales which are being breathlessly repeated by VR enthusiasts:
In response to [BusinessWeek reporter Emily] Chang’s question about when VR will begin to see mainstream traction, Bosworth said:
“If you look a little closely, I think it’s starting to happen right now. The fact that Oculus Quest 2—in just a few months on the market—has outsold not just its predecessor, but all of its predecessors combined, is a tremendous indicator that we are now at that point where we have broken through from the early adopter crowd to an increasingly mainstream crowd.”
This is indeed a significant milestone, especially considering that Quest 2 has only been on the market for five and a half months, while the company’s first headset launched five years ago.
Is it though? The thing is, what a company says to a reporter is often different from what they're legally obligated to accurately state in their earnings report:
And last January, Facebook reported that it had a $539 million revenue jump from Q4 in 2019 to Q4 in 2020, almost all from Oculus Quest 2 sales. And basic math suggests this means Facebook probably sold between 1.5 to 2 million Oculus Quest 2 units in its first four months on the market. (Factoring in January 2021 through March 2021 sales, it's now probably closer to around 2 million total.)
2 million is not nothing, but that means the Oculus Quest 2 still trails far behind PSVR which sold 5 million units in early last year. If anything, you can spin these numbers in the opposite direction and say this: The PSVR has far outsold Oculus Quest 2 and all its predecessors combined.
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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