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.”

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.

SEE ALSO
First Filed in 2017, Vision Pro EyeSight Patent Envisioned Anime Eyes & Furry Avatars

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.

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • David

    Completely unsurprising. There are far more standalone Quest 2 users than Quest 2 PCVR users. This is a major reason why devs often choose to not even bother releasing their games on PCVR at all; it’s just not worth the time and effort for them.

    • Ookami

      Ultrawings is on Steam

      • David

        I know, I own it on Steam… That doesn’t change what I said at all though lol

        • Ookami

          They were talking about Ultrawings 2’s PC performance VS it’s standalone performance. They weren’t talking about Quest 2 pc performance. They were talking about PC performance.

    • ViRGiN

      unsurprising?
      look at the market pre-quest 1. it was all crappy games, and to this day top of the charts are rec room, beat saber, pavlov. every single attempt at bringing something more complex fails immensly. after the fall, green hell, kayak – who the f cares about those? they always go back to the only thing they know.

      pcvr is just for vrchat furries and people who dont respect themselves

    • Corellianrogue

      The only VR games not released on PC are a few exclusives Meta paid for (and the same with Sony with some PSVR exclusives) and a couple of hand-tracking-based games. There are FAR more VR games released on PC that haven’t been released on Oculus/Meta Quest.

      • David

        Do people here have reading comprehension issues or have I just completely failed to articulate my point? I’m not saying there are more Quest games than PCVR games. I’m saying games released on both platforms tend to sell vastly more copies on Quest than on PCVR. This is not the first time I’ve seen a developer make this exact comparison in terms of unit sales. As much as I hate to admit it, standalone VR titles tend to do much better in the market than PCVR titles, and that means that developers may end up focusing more on Quest than they do on PCVR.

      • Tommy

        I love all my headsets but do tire of people saying there’s nothing to play on PCVR or that it’s mostly shovelware.
        Here’s what I’ll do, I’ll post some of my favorites I play on PCVR and challenge anyone to post a better list from another platform…

        Alien Isolation
        Asgard’s Wrath
        Assetto Corsa (1&2)
        A-Tech Cybernetic
        Battlezone
        Blade and Sorcery (The Outer Rim)
        Boneworks
        Borderlands 2
        Cyberpunk 2077
        Dead and Buried
        Dead Effect 2
        Deep Rock Galactic
        Defector
        Devil May Cry 5
        Dirt 2
        Doom 3 BFG
        Echo Combat
        Edge of Nowhere
        Elden Ring
        Elder Scrolls Morrowind
        Elder Scrolls Skyrim
        Elite Dangerous
        Everslaught
        F1 2022
        Fallout 4
        Firewatch
        From Other Suns
        The Forest
        Gary’s Mod
        Grand Theft Auto V
        GTFO
        Half Life (1&2)
        Half Life: Alyx
        Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
        Hitman (1,2,&3)
        Horizon Zero Dawn
        Into the Radius
        LA Noire
        Left 4 Dead 2
        The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
        Life is Strange: Before the Storm
        Lone Echo (1&2)
        Lucky’s Tale
        Mafia (1&2)
        Mech Warrior 5
        Megatron Rainfall
        Microsoft Flight Simulator
        Monster Hunter Rise
        No Man’s Sky
        No One Lives Forever
        Outer Wilds
        Paper Beast
        Payday 2
        Pray for the Gods
        Project Cars (2&3)
        Project Wingman
        Red Dead Redemption 2
        Resident Evil (,2,3,4,7,8)
        Risk of Rain 2
        Seeking Dawn
        Serious Sam (1-4)
        Sniper Elite
        The Stanley Parable
        Star Wars Dark Forces
        Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
        Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast
        Star Wars Squadrons
        Star Wars TIE Fighter
        Star Wars X-Wing Alliance
        Stormlands
        Subnautica (1&2)
        Valheim
        Wanderer

        Go ahead everyone, I’ll wait….

        • shadow9d9

          I mean, you listed shovelware like Blade and Sorcery…which is a poor tech demo with nearly no game development progress in years.

          • Tommy

            Thanks for your opinion. I agree that it lacks story which I am disappointed about. However, B&S with The Outer Rim is a Star Wars fan’s fantasy come true. To me, it’s better than almost any Star Wars game released in VR. If you don’t like it, it’s cool. It’s not for everyone :)

      • shadow9d9

        A few? A few dozen of the highest rated VR games.

        • Corellianrogue

          The Quest hasn’t got a few dozen exclusives. Off the top of my head I can only think of Resident Evil 4 VR, Star Wars Tales From The Galaxy’s Edge, Jurassic World VR, The Climb 2. Cities VR and Hand Physics Lab. I’m not counting Moss Book 2 or The Twilight Zone VR as I’m pretty sure they’re just timed exclusives and will be available for PC VR soon.

  • namekuseijin

    Tbh, despite all the efforts by the dev to make for some fun Pilotwings/Nintendo style gameplay missions, I’d say that’s not what pc enthusiasts who invest in pricey GPUs and VR headsets are after – why would they buy Ultrawings instead of VTOL when the latter offers way better graphics and real locations to fly around instead of mini maps?

    The dev seems to be in some deep dilemmas, because although may have found more players on Quest, these are mostly into easy thrills and don’t engage at all with all the missions the game has to offer – achievements show these. And also they heavily favor multiplayer gaming, something sorely rough rn in UW2. so most end up going for Warplanes, which may not be the most realistic flight model, but is good enough, good looking with more realistic looks and has one hell of a multiplayer mode, even with two players per plane…

    I think the niche of Pilotwings fans is very small compared with enthusiasts on pc and multiplayer rabbids on Quest…

    • Andrew Jakobs

      But Pilotwings/ultrawings is for a completely different audience as VTOL, that’s like saying Mario kart is bad because assetto Corsa looks and drives much more realistic…

      • namekuseijin

        difference audiences, that’s all I’m saying…

      • Ad

        Every non Mario kart racing game of that genre does pretty terribly though. Crash, sonic, and Nick racing were all pretty niche games. It’s a really hard thing to pull off this style of game well, enough that a lot of people would just ignore it. Like Tiny Cities vs Cities VR, I’d guess only one pulled in the city builder people because the other was chill but also really shallow.

      • Cl

        Maybe thats true for the headsets themselves. Could explain why this sells better on quest.

    • ViRGiN

      the people who invested in pcvr have nothing to play. either you are racing sim extremist, or outdated dude playing flat-to-vr mods with no real vr controls, or you’re vr consumer who plays whatever crap is available on steamvr which – spoiler alert – is all mobile games without being optimized to run on mobile

      • Corellianrogue

        Nothing to play on PC VR other than nearly every single game the Quest has bar a few exclusives plus about 1,000 more? LMAO!

      • namekuseijin

        > outdated dude playing flat-to-vr mods with no real vr controls

        dude, I’d rather be playing downgraded vanilla Skyrim with no mods on Quest than most made for VR games.

        don’t delude yourself, most gamers don’t give a crap to crappy VR games. Until massive support in regular games is here, VR will be in the hands of non-gamers and indies feeding minigames to them…

        • shadow9d9

          Skyrim has always been an ultra generic and soulless game…so that simply speaks to your lack of taste.

          • namekuseijin

            it’s absolutely great, and a great representation of classic RPG tropes, awesome breadth of exploration, great dungeon crawling, quest history is a great way not to get lost, bits of lore everywhere, all kinds of rare equip to be found, NPC parties wasn’t even expecting that… my days of eletronic RPG were mostly in the 90s, Skyrim had it all. And last but not least, the northerner aesthetics and creatures were at the time the most direct game answer to Jackson’s TLOTR movie trilogy.

            it became ultra popular with kids who only want to dress up as hot elves or furries and with moddiots, but that’s not the game’s at fault…

            anyway, I’d give a kidney for it on Quest, or even older Elder Scrolls…

      • Jonathan Winters III

        man you are the most toxic person here. you live to get a rise out of people, extremely opinionated, pushing your POV on others. just shut the fuck up already!

        • ViRGiN

          stop getting triggered and pushing your hate towards minority.

          • David Wilhelm

            They are already muting you here too bro.. ‘minority’, lmao. stfu!

    • philingreat

      I’d say that’s not what pc enthusiasts who invest in pricey GPUs and VR headsets are after
      But why did Ultrawings 1 sold so much better on steam than Ultrawings 2? Ultrawings 1 has 6x more reviews (Ultrawings 1 373 reviews, Ultrawings 2 57 reviews). Ultrawings 2 is an improved version of Ultrawings 1, and sequels usually sell better, so why did it not? Because the PCVR market got smaller over time but the Quest market got bigger.

      • namekuseijin

        probably because back then there was no VTOL or MSFS for pcvr fans to fry their GPUs…

        it becomes unacceptable to them to be playing games with “mobile graphics”, despite them putting on a tantrum over RE4 Quest exclusivity or the eternal popularity of something like Team Fortress…

  • PCVR gamers want PC graphics, not cartoon style for mobile graphics, even if you focused on PCVR, the style of your graphics is doable by any Android with a Cardboard headset.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Funny, as a PCVR gamer I don’t care, as long as the game is fun.

      • ViRGiN

        funny, as someone who have self respect – i want the game adequate to the platform it’s running on. and the truth is, 99% of pcvr are mobile games, without being optimized to run on mobile.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          That’s the beauty of PC, it can do it all (as long as you’ve got the GPU for the newer games). As I’ve said many times, PCVR with the high fidelity requires a very beefy GPU, and that’s not a big market that has both, even a lot of PCVR gamers just have something between a 970 – 3060 (or AMD equivalents), so even as a PCVR developer you have to take into account that the market for highend graphics is just small, but it takes a large chunk out of your budget if you cater for it. I guess in a couple of years we finally get to see the AAA games for VR we’ve already are accustomed to for flatscreen.

          • ViRGiN

            almost no games have a minimum requirment of 970 or something…
            plus playing in the lowest possible details is kinda detrimental to going for pcvr in the first place.

            i bet we will see AAA games, but not for the pcvr. literally not a single reason to do it there. you said it yourself, developers have to take into account something between 970-3060… so why would they, when it doesn’t make real money? it’s better to code for a single ps5 architecture.

      • Tommy

        I enjoy both. That’s why I have both types of VR systems. I love a fun game but I’m also a bit of a graphics whore.

    • namekuseijin

      you mean like Minecraft, Roblox, League of Legends, Valheim, Team Fortress and other popular steam games?

      • Ookami

        Minecraft and Roblox aren’t on Steam.
        But yeah, I disagree with the idea of photorealism>cartoony.

  • JakeDunnegan

    It’s likely from the competition. Meta/Facebook/whatever has been kinda notorious on how slow they have approved and offered games on the Quest platform, so the ones that DO make it through the hoops have a lot less competition.

    • Ookami

      Meta needs to go down for all the anti-competitive scandals they’re behind.

    • David Wilhelm

      I know multiple PCVR devs that Meta has taken years to respond to.

      • JakeDunnegan

        Uh, not the point I was making. In other words, anyone can (and do) get their PCVR games approved quickly on Steam, whereas like a year ago, there were like only 500 available on the Meta store.

        If Meta is notorious for taking their time approving Quest apps, if anything, they are worse on anything on Steam, which they don’t really officially support. However, Valve has done a good job working on compatibility with the Meta products being usable on the Steam store.

  • Clownworld14

    im just sick of low grade shovelware crap on vr market – there are only a few vr games really worth your time, the rest is junk.

    • ViRGiN

      always has been, but NOOO, pcvr is not dead lol
      steam has like several thousands titles – thousands arent even played by a single person for days or weeks! lol

      • namekuseijin

        Tbh, same is true for most Quest games…

        • ViRGiN

          it doesn’t take $1500+ to get into vr. at $300 price point, it’s a very fun gadget even if you don’t use it that often. i see kids buying yeezys and jordans for nearly as much, and often even more. it shows you what technology is capable of, and unlike pcvr, it’s actually long-term supported and constantly gets new features.

          pcvr doesn’t even really let you watch videos on the go. there is no easy access to ‘tv’ platform like there is on quest.

    • namekuseijin

      yes, and Ultrawings 2 is worth your time.

    • Denny Unger

      Many of the top selling Quest 2 games are *not* “shovelware crap”. In fact one of the big reasons that ecosystem is succeeding is because they actually curate and prevent shovelware from hitting the main storefront.

  • ViRGiN

    you will spit out those words once decagear, arpara, lynx and pimax 12k releases their products111!

  • ViRGiN

    also:

    DEAR SONY BOSSES, PLEASE PORT YOUR BEST PSVR2 GAMES TO MY CRAPPY PCVR! IT WILL COST YOU NOTHING, AND EVERY DEVELOPER SHOULD STRIVE AND GO BORDERLINE CRAZY AFTER EVERY SINGLE SALE!!

  • ViRGiN

    they are both toilets tbh. i’ll see you in contractors again one day – you know, the game that for some reason is ignored by both services.
    did you get banned there?

  • Ad

    1) This has tons of competition on PC from VTOL to MS Flight Sim, but almost none on quest.
    2) I thought this was made for quest first, nothing about it or the marketing suggested otherwise.

    • ViRGiN

      you are still living in denial.
      the game on steam costs 20.99 euro, 24.99 euro on the Oculus store. 50% of steamvr users are on quest 2. everyone uses steam. yet developer sees 10x more on standalone?
      this game is not competing with vtol or ms flight sim lol. you are delusional. this is fun arcady good-mood flying game; not a combat mission simulator, or do whole start flight procedure that takes 40 minutes lol

      ms flight is especially hyper niche. dude.

    • philingreat

      But Ultrawings 1 sold so much better on steam than Ultrawings 2 and when Ultrawings 1 was released, there was already all the competition so that can not be thre reason. Ultrawings 1 373 reviews, Ultrawings 2 57 reviews. Why? Because the PCVR market got smaller over time but the Quest market got bigger.

      • Ad

        VTOL was not there when U1 released, neither was MSFS 2020, and the other games were a lot buggier and rougher to play in VR.

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    “stand-alone VR is far more successful than PCVR.”

    is probably true in general, but you cannot deduce that from this game in particular. I wouldn’t doubt that Bit Planet Games sold ten times as many copies on Quest than on Steam, but there are numerous factors here that contributed:

    – Ultrawings 1/2 are the ONLY flight simulators available on the official Quest store. The only other Quest flight “sim”/game I am aware of is Simple Planes VR, which is only on App Lab, meaning most users will never realize it exists.
    – Ultrawings 1/2 simpler, cartoon art and arcady game style fits well with other Quest apps that usually go for somewhat stylized graphics and shorter experiences, so few Quest players will be disappointed. Ultrawings utilizes the platform appropriately, and provides the first/only opportunity to do somewhat realistic flying on Quest 2.
    – PCVR players on the other hand associate flight simulators with games like MS Flight Simulator 2020 with extremely realistic graphics or X-Plane 11 with a focus on realistic physics and a steep learning curve. For these Ultrawings is mostly just another arcade flying game, so the only reason to buy it is if you were looking for exactly that. Just for perspective, there are 200 games/apps tagged with “flight” that offer VR support available on Steam.

    So we have one stylized arcade mechanic flying game without any competing title on the one platform vs 200 on the other platform that go from simple arcade to hyperrealistic simulation with people flying real routes in real time directed by other people coordinating all of them from virtual flight towers. Making this comparison not exactly apples vs apples, and therefore not the best source to derive the sales potential of all the other VR games on the two platforms from.

    I’m pretty sure most VR titles that release on both Quest and PCVR will in fact sell a lot better on Quest, simply due to user numbers. But these titles usually aren’t exactly technically demanding for PCs, so these aren’t the reason why people invested into Index and high end RTX card for. It would make more sense to compare the success of games where graphics quality and gameplay complexity aren’t the focus. Games like Beat Saber or Job Simulator, where you could of course have a PC version with much better graphics, but it wouldn’t add a lot to the gameplay. In Job Simulator the cartoony graphics fit very well with the physical comedy gameplay, while there is a very apparent gain from having photorealistic environments in a flight simulator. The Quest will probably still win in most categories where a Quest version is even possible, but with a margin significantly smaller than 10:1.

    • ViRGiN

      I’m sure developers have access to statistics who is connecting from what, so 50% of Quest 2 users despite having PC copy on Rift store does not mean they will still launch it from PC. I’m sure if asked on Twitter, they would clarify that, but who are you kidding..

      • Arno van Wingerde

        Is the PC version of this game much better than the Quest version, e.g. graphically? If not, people with both a Quest and a PCVR may have little reason to use the PC version, see Rob below. But just try to run flight simulator stand-alone on a Quest,,,

        • ViRGiN

          no idea about pc, “much better” is subjective. fun fact, 99.9% vr people are not interested in flight simulator, so what’s the point of bringing that here? by calling out such an EXTREME niche game that takes months to learn basic, you aren’t getting any real feedback.

        • RuneSR2

          Yes it is – better textures, better poly count , better shadows etc – but hard to see in the trailers, you have to look for the changes – but they are pretty massive if you know what to look for.

    • Dragon Marble

      Exactly. A better game for this kind of statistics is Green Hell VR, where the PC version is substantially different from the Quest version. Right now there are 1668 ratings on Quest and 396 on Steam. So the ratio is more like 4:1 if you truly take advantage of PC.

  • David

    I don’t know why you bother putting all your posts in bold text, it’s honestly kind of obnoxious and obviously attention-seeking

  • Rand

    I play PCVR on my Quest 2 with Airlink. The only reason I play the Quest 2 at all is because its 100% wireless, changes the game completely. I will play Quest 2 games as well but I still prefer PCVR gaming.

    • Tommy

      You can still do wireless on PCVR. It’s not exclusive to stand alones :)

  • Ookami

    Polls aren’t really useful IMO. They’re skewed towards the bias that your audience (or selection group) already has, and the polls almost never have a large enough selection group for accurate results.

  • Rob

    The good news is that you dont need to choose one or the other. You can simply buy a Quest 2 and a game PC and you have both worlds. Quest 2 as a standalone is great for the simple games and sports games that require free walking (table tennis, golf etcetera.). And for the quest 2 exclusives of course. PCVR on the other hand is the only option for large PC games that also offer PCVR support. Like flight simulator, skyrim, hitman, assetto corsa etc. If a game comes to both platforms I usually favour the standalone version over the PCVR version. No wires and you dont need to be near the PC. PCVR games also require sometimes some tweaking yo get it going. What I find annoying . That matters more to me than the graphics of PCVR. I am also still surprised how good the standalone Quest 2 graphics are for most games.

  • vancleefmustache

    Well, Ultrawings 2 on Steam is listed as early access still. so it’s not technically fully out for PC.

    • ViRGiN

      pcvr people love unfinished games and don’t bat an eye.
      early access is NOTHING more than “stop whining, it’s called early access so all your criticism is invalid”

      • vancleefmustache

        Right. Which is why it’s not an accurate description to say that something sold 10 times as much if one of the version’s of the game is incomplete. There are PCVR people who love unfinished games. There are also PCVR people who don’t want an unfinished game. Personally, this sounds like an excuse from the developers to not complete the PCVR version

        • ViRGiN

          what is incomplete about this version?
          can you literally tell any differences, besides the label on steam page, which, for your information, ultra-hyper-successfull steam games don’t bother updating ever to this day

          i was going to start with h3vr, but clearly after seeing my comments online he finally updated it (for 6 years it kept saying something about a year of earl acccess)

          pavlov vr released in 2017:
          Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
          “6 to 12 months”

          nobody cares about how is it titled. if the steam version of the game is pretty much the same build as on oculus store, then it changes nothing.

          • vancleefmustache

            Again, I assume it’s not complete because the words “Early Access” is on there, which is why I have not bought it yet as i was waiting for a final product. If this is the final product, they need to remove the tag.

          • ViRGiN

            If you read further:
            “We are launching Ultrawings 2 without HOTAS / Gamepad / Rudder pedal support. This system is being worked on but is not ready for primetime yet. Also, Virtual Desktop is not supported yet but Oculus Air Link works just fine!

            So unless you are planning to play with such hardware, it’s not really “early access” with missing features. It doesn’t appear that even the Rift store version supports it. It’s not even advertised as game supporting these devices clearly.

  • David Wilhelm

    Hopefully they can ban you both here next.

  • ViRGiN

    well, both of them are actively refusing to cover the story about palmer luckey cv1 free audio fix kit.
    obviously because palmer was throwing money around at everyone who was covering anything vr, especially uploadvr.

  • rfanck

    And what’s funny (or not) is that they do not want to share any numbers, it’s ten times ! I tell you : TEN TIMES !

    • shadow9d9

      Echoing the same sentiments as a dozen other developers.

  • NL_VR

    So why does everyone argue against each other.
    Play on PCVR if you want that or play on Quest if you want that.
    Its simple, why give a fuk?

  • Cragheart

    :-(

  • RuneSR2

    All Quest 2 users have free access to the PCVR (Rift) version – why would they buy the PCVR version? 50% of all Steam users use a Quest 2. Also the Steam version is early access, while the Quest version is not – many don’t buy early access.

    This article is biased and flawed. Let’s compare two games where Quest users do not get the PCVR version for free, and where none of the versions are early access!