Originally posted on my Patreon
Courtesy my metaverse pal Neil Barbour, research analyst with S&P Global Market Intelligence, here's some pretty interesting virtual world user data infographics, based on a survey that the top intelligence firm recently conducted.
Over 4000 consumers participated. And while the overall sample was demographically diverse, Neil notes, "respondents were heavily tilted toward millennials in urban settings. This dynamic likely produced an outsize representation of digital natives, or virtual environment 'early adopters,' which while not an accurate representation of the overall population still provides valuable insights into a wide range of consumer perceptions." Agreed!
In the first slide (above), S&P asked consumers about what specific virtual experiences they engaged with recently.
No surprise that Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite are the most popular platforms named, since all of them have 100 million monthly active users or more (or in Roblox's case, much more). Just as interesting to me is that VRChat is the fourth named virtual experience, when that platform's MAU is much smaller (closer to 12 million).
Relatedly, Second Life is pretty high up among the platforms named, even above virtual worlds with far higher MAU, including Rec Room and ZEPETO, both of which have tens of millions users. (But skew much more Gen Z, who are much less likely to take an online survey, versus Millennials.)
Another notable datapoint is that most of these platforms have seen increased usage (at least in this S&P survey) from 2024 to 2025:
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Wagner James Au / New World Notes 