Good Times For Sony PlayStation VR
Turns out there might
actually be money in Virtual Reality hardware.
Since going on sale just
four months ago, Sony executive Andrew House, sharing the figure in an
interview with the New York Times published today, said the company has sold
915 thousand of its virtual reality headsets, the PlayStation VR. The article
also details that Sony had originally set internal target to sell one million
headsets in the first six months of sales, a number that the company seems
well-positioned to meet with ease.
"You literally have
people lining up outside stores when they know stock is being
replenished," House said about the situation in Japan.
The Playstation VR,
which the company released in October, works with the company’s PS4 console.
Sony announced in December that the company has sold more than 50 million of
the console. If PlayStation VR is bought by users in the high single-digit
percentage of all PS4 owners, House said he would be "very happy."
Compared to competing
products from Facebook’s Oculus and HTC, the PS VR is a relative bargain. While
Oculus charges $599 for its Rift headset (and $199 for the Touch controllers)
and HTC charges $799 for its virtual reality system, Sony’s PS VR system and
controllers are available for just $499 with the kicker being the other systems
require a high-end gaming PC.
In a virtual reality
market where headset adoption numbers are leaving many investors with cold feet
and many founders with nervous countenances, these numbers perhaps spell a
brighter future for consumer “mid-tier VR,” which does not require a high-end
gaming PC but instead relies on the brains of gaming consoles. Microsoft is set
to reveal more in June at E3 about its “Project Scorpio” Xbox hardware which
will supposedly boast support for virtual reality headsets.
HTC and Oculus have yet
to release sales data for their headsets, though most analysts pin the sales of
both well below 500 thousand devices sold.
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