How much is about one million headsets? Consumers purchased 915,000 PlayStation VR headsets as of Feb. 19, roughly four months after it went on sale, so The New York Times reports. This is in line with Sony’s goal of one million by April.
But how does this result, which seems to please the upper management of Sony, compare? In that same article it was said that SuperData Research estimates there were 243,000 Oculus Rift headsets and 420,000 HTC Vive headsets sold by the end of last year.
On the other hand, the Playstation VR headset is an add-on to the Playstation 4 of which more than 53 million have been sold. For now virtual reality is heavily into gaming, and Playstation 4 is of course squarely into that market, so one cannot say there has been a stampede of gamers to use VR.
In The Wall Street Journal VR-industry sources sound rather disappointed. “One million is almost nothing”, one expert says. But then again, Sony has been very cautious. In Belgium at least the headset is not promoted at all. Even well-stocked game console shops seem to ignore it – there are no demo-stations (and nor are there demo’s for other VR-headsets) – so maybe a lack of supply and of sales efforts explain the limited results.
All of which means that game developers will stay cautious. The market is still very small and divided among competing platforms – and one of the reasons is that there are not that many compelling titles out there.
It’s still very early phase though, but as usual research companies don’t hesitate making bold predictions. Superdata says:
Like most new technologies and platforms, virtual reality has had a rocky, but predictable, start. But the path is clear: by 2020, the virtual reality market will be worth 20 times what it was in 2016. $37.7B to be precise. This year, the emerging market will grow to a considerable $4.9B, driven largely by hardware with software getting its footing.
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