It looks like Sony’s efforts to bring virtual reality to consoles has been paying off as more than one million PlayStation VR headsets have been sold since launch back in October, despite the lack of big game launches outside of Farpoint and Resident Evil VII.
The new milestone was reached last month, though it does also mean that PSVR headset sales have slowed down significantly over the last few months. Back in mid-February, it was revealed that 915,000 PSVR headsets had been sold, so it has taken three months to rack up those final 75,000 sales.
While Sony is happy about crossing the 1 million sales mark, PlayStation's global sales head, Jim Ryan explained to Business Insider that this is still not what Sony would describe as mass adoption: “We would not describe 1 million units the same as mass adoption but we would call it a good start”.
Perhaps we will see PSVR adoption pick up the pace again after E3, depending on whether or not Sony has new virtual reality games to announce. If you want to tune in to Sony's E3 conference live, then you can find all of the details in our schedule guide, HERE.
KitGuru Says: PlayStationVR seems like a decent enough headset but Sony needs to announce some more full games to really get people interested. Have any of you had the chance to try out a PSVR headset already?
PSVR costs about as much as a PS4 Pro. I’m not fussed about diving on a platform if there’s a single game I really want to play but there aren’t any compelling games like that on PSVR.
Strewth, is that all? Kinect was considered a flop and that sold 24 million units (including bundles).
It might be because Sony aren’t pushing it like Microsoft was that it’s considered to be doing better, or it could be down to timescale. It probably took Microsoft a lot longer to reach 24 million units sold than it has for Sony to sell a million units.
I’m sure the price will come down in time and more compelling games will be released. With new tech it’s always best to play the waiting game and hold out on more compelling reasons other than “Look at this shiny new thing!”.
How about the Move controller? That sold 4.1m units in it’s first 2 months from release, 15 million in it’s first 2 years but is considered a flop, with Sony UK even saying ” the device had not lived up to their expectations, in either their target audience or the software support that had been provided for it”
Point is, two of the more notable flops of recent years, the Kinect and Move, have outsold PSVR massively. Flogging 85,000 units worldwide in 3 and a half months since mid Feb is appalling. The Wii U has sold over 100,000 units this calendar year for comparison…
I played PSVR at the beta stage and was stoked. Eve Valkyrie in particularly had me lusting after one but we’re in a chicken and egg situation, software support will be low until higher adoption makes it worthwhile but adoption will remain low without the software support or a more palatable price. E3 had better show a big price cut or bundle with the Pro because at the moment, the install base of PSVR is under 2% of PS4 owners.