Boneworks Developer Discusses Why Studios Aren’t Focusing Solely on PC VR

When you dive into the VR community on social media, you’ve likely encountered dedicated PC VR enthusiasts arguing that the future of VR hinges on more high-end PC VR games. But, interestingly enough, the mind behind Boneworks and Bonelab recently took to X to shed light on why studios aren’t crafting VR games that require ultra-powerful PCs.

Brandon J Laatsch, that developer, posed an intriguing question on X: “When you say PCVR, what minimum specs are you imagining? Quest 3 meets or exceeds the CPU, RAM, and GPU of 2016’s PCVR requirements and even beats its drive speeds. So, what target are we really aiming for by 2025?”

Laatsch further elaborated on the business side of things: “Consider this—breaking even on a $10 million budget demands 416,000 sales at $40 each. That’s a steep climb, as very few VR games are hitting those numbers.”

He dives deeper into the economic puzzle. For a game tailored to the likes of Quest 3 and its successors—right past Quest 2—the studio might justify a $10 million ceiling. To reach even that breakeven point, you’d need substantial sales, which as Laatsch puts it, many VR games aren’t achieving at the moment.

Despite the evolving marketplace for VR and platforms like Horizon Worlds gaining traction, Quest remains the primary revenue driver for most developers. Ignoring it would mean slashing a game’s budget, which in turn would lead to compromises on scope, scale, and visual fidelity—a tricky balancing act to perfect, as Laatsch remarks.

The current landscape shows a small, almost static fraction of Steam users—less than 2%—engaging with VR headsets monthly. Even accounting for Chinese users, it barely nudges past 3%. For developers to focus on PC VR games with high production values without backing from entities like Valve, this demographic would need a dramatic bump. Speculation swirled around a new Valve headset boosting these numbers, yet talk of a $1200 price tag caught many off guard.

So, as we step into 2025, the conversation isn’t just about technical requirements or budgets, but also about the ever-shifting dynamics of VR’s potential audience and adoption rates. Laatsch’s insights underscore the complexity and risks involved in pushing the VR frontier forward.