Newshot Meta Quest App Business Model Shifts: In-App Purchases Now Outperform Paid Apps as the Core Revenue Source for the Horizon Store
IT之家 November 14 news — Meta has published a post revealing that between January and September 2026, in-app purchases on the Quest platform surpassed paid app sales, becoming the largest revenue source for the Meta Horizon Store.
For users who have long tracked the Quest platform's trajectory, this shift is not surprising. As early as 2022, the free game Gorilla Tag had already surpassed Beat Saber — then considered the most successful VR game — in number of user reviews. Today, Gorilla Tag is one of the few apps on the Quest platform to exceed 100,000 user reviews, though it has now been overtaken by two other free games, Animal Company and UG.
In response, foreign outlet UploadVR argues that free social games and microtransaction-dependent games have gradually come to dominate the Quest platform, which partly explains why Meta has decided in recent years to divest itself of most of its first-party paid game studios.
Looking back, Meta had long been one of the largest investors in the VR paid game space; its first-party and related titles include Deadpool VR, Asgard's Wrath 2, Armature's VR port of Resident Evil 4, and Batman: Arkham Shadow. Yet among these titles, only Resident Evil 4 made it onto the Quest Store bestseller list, at No. 44.
By comparison, according to data from Alinea Analytics, Sony's highest-grossing first-party game this console generation is God of War: Ragnarök, ahead of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Gran Turismo 7 — all three developed by Sony's own studios. On the 任天堂 side, the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time became the fastest-selling game on the Switch 2 platform, moving 5.2 million copies in the first four days after release. Currently, the best-selling Switch 2 games are all exclusives developed or published by 任天堂 itself, including Mario Kart World, Pokémon Pokopia, Donkey Kong Bananza, and Pokémon Legends Z-A.
From this it can be seen that Sony / 任天堂 have successfully earned a certain return by investing in high-quality paid first-party games. By contrast, Meta's returns in this area are less evident. Its best-performing first-party title remains Beat Saber, but the game already enjoyed considerable popularity in the VR market before Meta acquired its developer Beat Games — it was not a new result generated under Meta's grand strategy.
Even so, Meta remains the largest financial backer in the VR game ecosystem today, though given that third-party developers have recently reported broadly insufficient funding for new projects, the weight of that title has diminished somewhat. When announcing layoffs or studio closures, the heads of several studios have cited a lack of funding support as an important reason.
Faced with changes in Quest users' preferences, different developers have begun trying different development strategies. Some teams that previously focused mainly on paid games — including Sinn Studio, Owlchemy Labs, Fun Train, Character Bank, Schell Games, nDreams, and even Meta itself — have begun venturing into free-to-play development, though with varying results.
Another group of developers has chosen to stick with the paid game path, such as The Binary Mill and Innerspace Studio. Among them, The Binary Mill even shelved its previously announced free social game project Survive The Night. In addition, several developers have chosen to convert Quest games that originally required payment into free-to-play models, including AEXLab's Vail, Triangle Factory's Hyper Dash, Ramen VR's Zenith: Nexus, and Meta's own Population: One, though these transitions have likewise yielded mixed results.
The outlet notes that as 2027 approaches, more VR developers are expected to continue trying different business models to attract new players. Overall, whether on the Quest platform or other VR platforms, the industry currently has no development path that can guarantee success. Free games, paid games, in-app purchases, and subscription services — each of these models has both success stories and failures.
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