Valve Reveals Top Selling VR Games on Steam in 2018

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As we head into the New Year, Valve has released a look back at 2018’s best selling VR titles on Steam.

Alongside the ongoing Steam Winter Sale (concluding January 3rd @ 10AM PT), Valve has published a series of ‘The Best of 2018‘ charts, showing which titles on Steam have fared the best across several metrics. Among the charts is a list of the top 100 best selling VR games on Steam in 2018, as measured by gross revenue.

The chart is broken into tiers ranging from Bronze to Platinum. Refreshing the page shuffles the titles in each tier, meaning we can’t tell directly how individual games in each tier stack up in terms of revenue, we only know that games in a higher tier had higher revenue than games in a lower tier.

Here’s a look at the Gold and Platinum tiers; since Valve is sorting each tier in a random order, we charted each title’s overall user reviews and sorted by that figure to bring a bit of order to the groups.

Platinum

Game	Release	Positive User Reviews
Beat Saber	2018 [EA]	97%
GORN	2017 [EA]	97%
Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades	2016 [EA]	97%
Onward	2016 [EA]	91%
Pavlov VR	2017 [EA]	89%
SUPERHOT VR	2017	89%
Arizona Sunshine	2016	86%
Job Simulator	2016	84%
Skyrim VR	2018	82%
OrbusVR	2017 [EA]	81%
VR Kanojo	2018	75%
Fallout 4 VR	2017	71%

Games in the platinum tier are mostly expected; though it’s interesting to see that 50% of this year’s platinum titles are in Early Access, slightly up from 42% last year. Interestingly, none of the platinum games are Early Access graduates (compared to 25% in the gold tier).

While the titles in platinum are mostly expected, the one that surprised us is VR Kanojo (2018), a relatively pricey ($50) adult VR game which was released in 2017 but hit Steam this year.

Despite relatively low reviews, Fallout 4 VR (2017) continues to sell well thanks to its highly recognized IP. It’s Bethesda brethren, Skyrim VR, also joins the platinum list having launched on PC earlier this year.

Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades takes platinum its second year running, and stands out for not only being launched initially back in 2016, but also for its exceptional user reviews.

In the platinum tier, 33% of titles were released in 2016, 42% in 2017, and 25% in 2018. It might seem surprising that only 25% of the titles were released in 2018, though the bulk of the non-VR platinum list is shared between 2018 (25%) and 2015 (25%).

Gold

Game	Release	Positive User Reviews
Space Pirate Trainer	2017 [prev. EA]	95%
Tilt Brush	2016	95%
I Expect You To Die	2017	92%
Sairento VR	2018 [prev. EA]	90%
Sprint Vector	2018	90%
Raw Data	2017 [prev. EA]	87%
STAND OUT: VR Battle Royale	2017 [EA]	77%
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality	2017	74%
Budget Cuts	2018	73%
Zero Caliber VR	2018 [EA]	73%
Virtual Desktop	2016	69%
DOOM VFR	2017	59%

In the gold tier only 17% of titles are in Early Access (compared to 50% in the platinum tier). That’s down considerably compared to last year’s gold tier in which 33% of games were in Early Access. Additionally, 25% of this year’s gold tier are Early Access graduates.

Following a similar pattern from Fallout 4 VR and Skyrim VR, DOOM VFR continues to see steady sales thanks to its recognizable IP, apparently despite decidedly mixed reviews. This is the game’s second year in the gold tier.

In the gold tier, 17% of titles were released in 2016, 50% in 2017, and 33% in 2018. That compares similarly to the non-VR gold tier in which 42% of titles were released in 2017.

– – — – –

Check out the full list of Steam’s top selling VR titles in 2018 to see which games made it into the Silver and Bronze tiers.

Looking for this year’s top VR games across platforms? Check out Road to VR’s 2018 Game of the Year & Design Award winners.

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‘Black Mirror’ Gives Power to the People

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Latest Oculus Unity Integration Expands HTC Vive Support, Improves Rift GPU Performance

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Last month, Facebook added basic support for HTC Vive to the Oculus Unity Integration. In the December release the company expanded that support, as well as reducing the GPU cost of Oculus Rift support.

Rift Performance Improvement

The Rift’s GPU performance improvement in Unity apps has been achieved by making the occlusion mesh culling “more aggressive”. This should free up some GPU time for rendering. However, it comes at the cost of making the editor preview smaller.

OVROverlay: Vive Support & New Sample

The latest feature of Oculus Integration to support the HTC Vive (and in theory any SteamVR headet) is OVROverlay. This is the Oculus compositor layers system, sometimes called “TimeWarp layers”. On HTC Vive these layers will be passed to SteamVR’s compositor.

Image from Oculus Developer Guide

CTO John Carmack often espouses the importance of rendering UI & text via TimeWarp layers. He went as far as calling it “the biggest” tip for sharp text in VR. OVROverlay is the way to do this in Unity.

As well as adding support for OVROverlay to HTC Vive, this update also adds a new sample scene & tutorial for the feature. Carmack has often noted in his public talks that many developers still don’t utilize this, so the new sample scene should be a great help. If you’re a developer of a VR app that doesn’t use compositor layers for your text, we  recommend checking it out. VR headsets are low enough resolution as it is, so you should use all the software tricks available.

Oculus Unity Profiler

The final addition of 1.32 is the Oculus Profiler Panel, a popup window for Unity specifically made for profiling VR performance. It works on Rift apps locally and from Oculus Go over USB. The release notes state that the feature doesn’t work properly on Gear VR yet. This is a welcome addition and should make finding the cause of performance issues easier.

Tagged with: htc vive, oculus, oculus rift, SteamVR, unity

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Valve Reveals 100 Best Selling Steam VR Games Of 2018

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Valve released a list of the 100 top selling VR games on Steam in 2018.

More than 1,000 titles released on Steam this year with VR support, according to Bellevue, Washington-based Valve Corporation. The vast majority of the releases are VR-only but the only completely new 2018 VR release to reach the top “platinum” tier of gross revenue on Steam was Beat Saber — which sold more than 100,000 copies in its first month of availability on PC this year.

We’ve linked to our reviews below for most of the titles in the platinum, gold and silver tiers. Other top selling VR titles at the platinum level include Fallout 4, Gorn, Orbus, H3VR, Pavlov, Skyrim (which released on PC in 2018 but appeared on PSVR in 2017), Superhot, Job Simulator, Onward, Arizona Sunshine and one title intended for adults only.

Gold tier of top grossing VR content on Steam in 2018.

The gold tier of titles includes Budget Cuts, Raw Data, Virtual Desktop, Stand Out, Tilt Brush, Sprint Vector, Sairento, Zero Caliber, I Expect You To Die, Space Pirate Trainer and Doom VFR. The silver tier includes two Serious Sam games as well as OVR, In Death, Moss, Box VR, Fruit Ninja, L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files, Richie’s Plank Experience, Creed, Dead Effect 2, Blade & Sorcery, VTOL, Audioshield and Duck Season.

Silver tier of top grossing VR content on Steam in 2018.

You can check out the 2016 and 2017 lists as well, with a lot of titles on 2018’s list also represented in previous years.  The full list on Steam also includes 60 games at the bronze tier as well as a new section this year that lists top releases of 2018.

Top VR releases of 2018 on Steam.

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Made-For-VR ‘FlyInside’ Is What VR Flight Simulation Needs

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After almost two years of development, FlyInside Flight Simulator has launched in Early Access on Steam. FlyInside is a made for VR flight sim which supports Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows MR heasdsets.

Virtual reality is well suited for cockpit sims, providing a sense of depth and scale monitors simply can’t match. Even from a practical perspective, looking around a cockpit naturally with your head is far easier than using a hat switch or D-pad. TrackIR is a useful middle ground, but is awkward for large movements since it isn’t 1:1 and the monitor is still stationary.

FlyInside originally began in 2015 as a Kickstarter for a mod for Flight Simulator X (FSX). The project raised more than double its $13,500 goal, unlocking Leap Motion support as a stretch goal, as well as support for Prepar3D, a newer flight simulator based on the FSX codebase.

Why A New Sim?

Through either mods or official updates, all major PC flight simulators today have some form of VR support. However, the fact that VR was an afterthought in these sims is often all too obvious. Performance is sub par, the menus are difficult to operate, and a lot of functionality is almost impossible while essentially blindfolded, requiring complex keyboard mappings. FlyInside standalone is tackling these issues by building from the ground up for VR.

Performance has been a key focus for the team’s custom engine. In VR low framerate feels sickening, so must be a priority. In our brief testing we found performance to be adequate on a GTX 970 with only a few hitches- noticeably better than the mod for Flight Simulator X.

The sim lets you decide which input device you want to use. You can use your VR controllers as virtual hands, Leap Motion to use your fingers directly, or the traditional option of a HOTAS (joystick).

Using Touch controllers in the mod for FSX felt tacked on and glitchy, but in the standalone it now feels native. Flicking switches, adjusting levers and even controlling the stick can all be done with your hands.

Aircraft

While all flight sims come with default aircraft, most enthusiasts use 3rd party solutions from studios who develop highly detailed models for multiple sims. For FlyInside, the studio has included 10 aircraft from studios MilViz and TFDi Design:

Light Aircraft

• Baron B55 [MilViz]
• Cessna 310R [MilViz]

Airliners

• Boeing 737-200 [MilViz]
• Boeing 717 [TFDi Design]

Legacy

• T-50 Bobcat [MilViz]
• DHC-3 Otter [MilVIz]

Military

• T-38 Jet Trainer [MilViz]

Helicopters

• Bell 407 [MilViz]
• MD 530 [MilViz]
• CH-47 Chinook [MilViz]

Future Plans

According to the early access listing on Steam, FlyInside plans to add:

• Improved scenery
• World-wide scenery coverage
• Live road and air traffic
• ATC functionality
• Improved flight model physics
• Additional aircraft and missions

The team intends to be in early access for 6 to 12 months. The sim will be at a higher price when it launches, with the price increasing when new features are added.

We’re certainly impressed with the initial early access build. VR flight simulation was once thought to be a simple addon for existing sims, but it’s now clear that a deeper appreciation of the challenge is needed. VR represents a unique interaction paradigm in which the user is essentially blindfolded. Rather than relying on old keyboard shortcut workflows, flight sims need to take radical new design decisions to streamline flying. The FlyInside team are one of the first to appreciate this and start the hard work.

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PSVR 2019: PlayStation Owned VR In 2018, Can Sony Stay Ahead In 2019?

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It was clear, by the end of 2018, that something was shifting in the VR landscape. A litany of identically-themed editorials about how PSVR had actually had an impressive year (including our own) offered a rare ray of sunshine from mainstream outlets. Against all odds and its own track record with peripherals, Sony proved that VR is a viable gaming platform.

But how does it keep that momentum going next year?

Competition Is Heating Up

2019 will see PSVR at an interesting crossroads. While Sony may have maintained the lead in software thus far, hardware is a different story. PSVR’s camera-based tracking system has always been a distant third to SteamVR and Oculus tracking and that gap’s only going to grow in the new year. Valve is pushing on with the next iteration of its VR offerings and Oculus is honing in on inside-out solutions. PC and mobile headset resolutions are also still improving whereas PSVR’s display remains the same as it was in 2016.

Playing Superhot VR or Beat Saber tether-free with a full range of movement on Oculus Quest could mean that PSVR starts to show its age next year. But, with 2019 increasingly looking like it may be the PS4’s swansong, the chances of any refreshed VR hardware are increasingly diminished. We’d love to see an inside-out tracked headset that enabled 360-degree movement in existing PSVR games but we seriously doubt we’ll see such an update until the true follow-up for the next console.

Sony arguably doesn’t need to pay this too much attention in 2019, though. Technical superiority seemingly hasn’t earned the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive better sales than PSVR’s, which now total over three million. But the threat of more accessible and more capable headsets is one that Sony can’t ignore for long.

Game On

The smartest path may be to simply brute force it on the content side. Astro Bot, Firewall and Wipeout are just three examples of games that made clever use of PSVR to overcome its hardware limitations in 2018. And these games weren’t just ‘good for PSVR’; they were arguably better than anything you’d find on Rift or Vive too.

There’s some promising stuff on the way. We remain cautiously optimistic about Blood and Truth and a few others. That said, Astro Bot wasn’t announced until early 2018 and released later in the year, so we’re confident that Sony has bigger things on the way. We still haven’t seen what’s Sony’s new UK-based VR studio is working on, either.

Pricing Perfection

Another price cut could also be in order. Sony did a great job incentivizing PSVR’s current price point with bundles in 2018, but the further away it can get from Quest’s $399.99 price tag the better. Is it possible that PS4 and PSVR could reach a lower all-in price than Quest in 2019? We hope so.

2019 may be the last year that PSVR can justify technical shortcomings. But, if this is to be a victory lap, let’s hope Sony makes it a killer one. I’m betting it can.

Tagged with: 2019, blood and truth, PSVR, sony

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The 5 Best Cross-Play Multiplayer Games for Rift, Vive and PSVR

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Single-player missions can be engrossing experiences on their own in VR, but when the campaign’s done and all the AI foes have been slain, you need to know that when you finally hit that ‘multiplayer’ button that the developers have targeted the largest number of players possible to help ensure a healthy online playerbase. Here we discuss games that will let you play together—be it on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and (sometimes) PlayStation VR too.

VR’s overall playerbase—even across all three major headsets—is still a pretty small community in contrast to the online spaces of established console/PC gaming. So while the multiplayer lobbies won’t be busting at the seams like you’re used to in flatscreen media, you’re still bound to find a group of casuals, die-hards, and try-hards populating the servers. We’ll be going through the best cross-compatible games for Rift and Vive, and PSVR. You’ll find a longer explanation below our top 5 list detailing more about PSVR cross-play (spoiler: there’s only a few).

Best Cross-Play Multiplayer

5 – Arizona Sunshine (Rift, Vive – PSVR separate)

Arizona Sunshine is a first-person zombie shooter that lets you play through a heart-pumping campaign in two-player co-op, or up to 4 players in ‘horde mode’. For an insanely fun game though, cross-play is awfully fickle to sort at first. Multiplayer is easiest when you’re dealing with the Steam version of the game, as VOIP isn’t available between different versions including the Rift-only version obtained from the Oculus Store. You can however link up with your buddy by using a third-party VOIP app like Mumble or Team Speak failing that. Unfortunately the PSVR version is a lonely island, and doesn’t offer cross-play with Rift or Vive.

Oculus Store – Steam (Rift, Vive) – PlayStation Store

SEE ALSO

'Arizona Sunshine' Review

4 – Sprint Vector (Rift & Vive – PSVR Separate)

In Survios‘ Mario Kart-style foot racing game Sprint Vector you’ll run faster, jump higher, and race until you grow to despise everyone in front of you and behind you on the way to the finish line.

Before you whip out your credit card though, consider this first: cross-platform multiplayer is only currently available between the Oculus Home and Steam versions, however private matches are sourced from either platform’s friends list, making it a hassle to connect up if half of your party purchased through a different store. There’s bad news for PSVR players too—there’s zero cross-play support, putting it squarely at the bottom of our list. If cross-platform multiplayer worked flawlessly, friends lists and all, it would be a golden example of the game everyone should buy and play together regardless of the headset you own.

Oculus Store – Steam (Rift, Vive) – PlayStation Store

SEE ALSO

'Sprint Vector' Review – Innovative Locomotion Makes Adrenaline-soaked Foot Racing a Reality

3 – Sparc

CCP’s 1v1 sports game Sparc was their last virtual reality title before shuttering their VR studios late last year. While CCP has basically called it quits for the medium for now, there’s still plenty of reasons to pick up Sparc if you’re looking to connect up with a buddy.

Sparc is by all measures a great game, but it’s even greater that you can play mano-a-mano against any one of your VR headset owning goons you call friends. Sparc suffers from the same issue as many cross-platform VR games though, i.e. no support for friends lists outside of the platform you’re on, but you can always host a game and hope for matchmaking serendipity—the silver lining to a slumping user base means you’ll probably be able to match up with your friend easily.

Oculus Store – Steam (Rift, Vive) – PlayStation Store 

SEE ALSO

Watch: This is 'Sparc', CCP's Striking New Futuristic VR Sports Title

2 – Star Trek: Bridge Crew

You don’t have to be a Trekkie (or Trekker) to see why sitting at the bridge of a star ship, cooperatively taking down hostile aliens is a really engrossing way to lose an entire afternoon/evening. With its 4-player multiplayer, you can go through the game’s half-dozen campaign missions, or alternatively experience an infinite number of procedurally-generated missions in the company of other Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PSVR-owners.

Created by Ubisoft’s Red Storm Entertainment, Star Trek: Bridge Crew is worth it if only to say you’ve been where no man’s gone before. Get in while the community is still buzzing from the latest DLC update, which brought Star Trek’s TNG-era Enterprise to the game.

Oculus Store – Steam (Rift, Vive) – PlayStation Store 

SEE ALSO

'Star Trek: Bridge Crew' Review

1 – Rec Room

Social apps are a fun way to talk and interact with people in VR, but if you don’t have something fun to do while you’re actually there, the novelty ultimately wears off. Anti Gravity’s Rec Room is a great way to experience fun activities like paintball or dodge ball, but the real meat of the game likes in their co-op ‘Quests’ and PvP battle royale game Rec Royale. Of course all of this is served up in a lovable cartoony environment while you have a chat with people from all over the world, or just your best buddies if you so choose. Did we mention it was free. Yeah, we can’t believe it either.

Rec Room isn’t only a great game, but it allows all players regardless of platforms to meet up, create friends and sally forth to take on all activities without the issues we mentioned above.

Oculus Store – Steam (Rift, Vive) – PlayStation Store

SEE ALSO

'Rec Room' Studio Raises $5M "to continue to build the future of Social VR"

Healthy Playerbases, Cross-compatibility Issues

Let’s face it: there aren’t many other cross-play multiplayer titles that currently work on all three major headsets. It’s a fact we’ve been living with since the headsets launched in 2016, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better due to two very real roadblocks outside of the friends list issue a large portion of cross-platform games suffer from. While platform exclusives wall out a large percentage of would-be users, the ugly truth is studios simply aren’t going head-first into VR multiplayer games like they once were. Time after time VR games that primarily feature multiplayer support have fallen to the wayside because of low hourly active user numbers, and perfectly fun games like Werewolves Within and Eagle Flight stand as testament to this.

If you buy a game and the servers aren’t populated with players, you probably won’t wait around too long for a match; it creates a vicious cycle that tends to spell the death of a game if a hardcore playerbase isn’t built-in due to things like active Discord servers or subreddits to keep people engaged outside of the matchmaking screen.

Thankfully for Vive and Rift owners, the PC platform are somewhat conjoined twins in all of this VR business. Steam offers Rift and Vive support pretty much on a de facto basis, and with ReVive at your disposal, hypothetically speaking all Oculus Rift multiplayer titles are cross-play capable if you own a Vive. It’s a pretty strange way of vaulting over the friends list roadblock, but entirely feasible if you’re motivated.

Update (December 27th, 2018): We’ve done a long-due overhaul of the list reflecting the latest developments in the games, and their cross-play abilities. We’ll be periodically updating this list as new games come out.

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