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PlayStation VR Estimated To Sell 2.6 Million Units By End Of Year
Video game market research company SuperData Research has been crunching a lot of numbers for Sony’s upcoming PlayStation VR headset, leading to some interesting sales predictions.
According to the company’s forecast, Sony will sell around 2,602,370 units of its PSVR headset before the end of 2016. To help further break this down, SuperData also released the following data points:
- The PSVR will benefit from an estimated 44M install base of PS4s and the ease of the plug-and-play setup, two advantages that set it apart from the HTC Vive and Oculus
- XBOX Kinect, a similar motion-tracking product, sold 8M units in 60 days with mostly just mini-games and wellness content available.
- Sony’s expertise at retail rollouts has helped generate publicity ahead of the PSVR release, scheduling 500,000 demos to help sell pre-orders of the device.
- The anticipation of big launch titles including Batman Arkham VR, Resident Evil VII, and Final Fantasy XIV make it a worthwhile purchase for gamers
- One possible limitation is their ability to deliver that many units, and Sony is, to be fair, a bit spotty with manufacturing a new device early in its life cycle.
- Also, we don't know if they'll have a "killer app" to convert consumers into a user base. Additionally, with the PS4 Pro coming out next month, consumers may opt to spend $400 on an optimized console over $500 for an add-on.
Read our full review of the PlayStation VR here, or watch us play several of the unit's biggest launch titles in our archived live stream.
Our Take
This is interesting. Sales estimates for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive from earlier in the year are much smaller. Sony's PSVR might not be the best headset technically, but it could prove to be the most popular. It will be interesting to see if PSVR sales are as strong as predicted this holiday season. More importantly, will they remain strong into 2017?
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