VRChat is now available on the Pico 4 standalone store.
Update November 9: VRChat is now available on Pico 4. This article, originally published October 22 to announce it was coming, has been updated to reflect this.
VRChat remains the leading social VR platform, with millions of users. On Meta Quest headsets it's almost always one of the top 10 most popular apps, and on Steam (where it also supports non-VR) it typically has tens of thousands of concurrent players.
The platform arrived as a surprising launch title for the original Oculus Quest in 2019, and for Android phones earlier this year.
Most PC worlds and avatars are too detailed to run performantly on mobile chipsets though, so VRChat takes a fragmented approach. All worlds and avatars must have a mobile-optimized version if the creator wants standalone VR & phone players to be able to join or use them. Creators can upload two versions of the same content, one for PC and another for mobile.
Last year VRChat added controller-free hand tracking support on Quest. Pico 4 also supports hand tracking, and ByteDance has been improving it with software updates recently, but VRChat on Pico 4 requires controllers for now.
Pico 4 still isn't sold in North America, and in Europe and Asia it no longer has the hardware specifications advantage over Meta with the release of Quest 3. At €430, Pico 4 is priced closer to the €350 Quest 2 than the €550 Quest 3 though, so is still an appealing option for some people, especially given it essentially comes with an Elite Strap built-in.
David Heaney
