According to a new report, Google search interest in VR porn has risen by 115% this year, over the same 6 month period last year. ‘BanklessTimes’ appears to be a CryptoCurrency website, and the ‘analysis’ seems to have consisted of taking a look at Google Trends and ahrefs data. There’s no doubt that search interest did spike enourmously over Christmas and the start of this year, thanks to the hype over the Metaverse and the Oculus Quest 2 becoming almost a must buy Xmas gift. However, all the indicators are that interest has gradually declined again, and has now returned to a little above the same level as it was last summer. That’s hardly surprising, given that there has now been no major VR headset release since the Quest 2 itself in October 2020.
The dearth in new headsets is about to come to an end, with the Quest 2 Pro set to be released by Meta in the coming months, with the Playstation VR 2 arriving perhaps in time for the holiday season, and even an Apple VR/AR headset finally expected to be announced early next year. Most analysts are forecasting that VR headset sales will have risen to around 15 million this year – an impressive figure, up from about 10 million last year. But given the likely releases of the major new headset mentioned above, the real rush is expected to come in 2023.
VR porn has established itself as a solid segment of the VR market. It’s isn’t popular enough (or quite good enough) to lead demand for VR headsets perhaps, but at the same time, you can be sure that if sales of headsets increase, then VR porn interest and sales will increase at least at a matching rate.
The same report also makes a jaw dropping claim that the VR porn industry will be worth $200 billion by 2030. Again, it’s not clear how much credence we should give that, or how exactly it was arrived at. Estimates of how much the adult industry itself is worth today is highly speculative, let alone how much a certain segment of it will be worth in 2030. A rather more respected research firm – Juniper Research – last year made the claim that VR porn sales will be worth $19 billion in 2026. While that may be well short of $200 billion, that would represent a massive increase of 2,800% on the $719 million the same report saw as representing total adult VR sales in 2021. If those figures were even close to being in the right ballpark (and as something of an insider to the industry, I suggested at the time that they were), then the $200 billion figure could be arrived at even before 2030.
The Juniper Research forecast contained the assumption that a greater percentage of VR headset wearers would pay for VR porn as the medium improved and it became more acceptable. In other words, VR porn growth would outstrip growth in VR headset sales. This seems plausible to me, although there are so many wildcards involved. If the social metaverse does become established and mainstream over the next decade, and a highly monetizable sort of red-light district emerges as part of it, then the potential size of ‘adult VR’ (not confined to what we understand as ‘VR porn’ today) is indeed almost limitless. On a more immediate level, it will depend on whether or not live VR porn cams take off (and there are strong signs that they are, despite the difficulties that live streaming in VR presents).
Another unknown is whether VR porn will eventually be attractive to women. Currently, there is no sign that it is. The one adult VR site that is ostensibly aimed at women – VirtualRealPassion – is actually mostly enjoyed by gay men, followed by heterosexual men who just want to experience VR sex through the point-of-view (POV) of a female. The fact that the studio uses mainly gay porn actors may be a contributing factor to that. However, an erotic social metaverse with photorealistic avatars, would likely be a completely different story. As said, if we include that possibility, then the ‘adult VR industry’ may well be worth a trillion dollars before long. And then, of course, there is augmented reality porn…
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