PlayStation VR (PSVR from now) released on October 13th, 2016 to strong anticipation among gamers. For the first time since launch, Sony revealed sales figures for the VR device.
Speaking to the New York Times, Sony Interactive Entertainment's CEO Andrew House said that consumers had purchased 915K units as of February 19th. Considering that Sony's internal forecast was targeting one million units by mid-April, the company can safely expect that to be surpassed. House said:
You literally have people lining up outside stores when they know stock is being replenished.
He also admitted there were others in the company with more enthusiastic sales projections and he helped to temper them down a little.
It’s the classic case in any organization — the guys who are on the front end in sales are getting very excited, very hyped up. You have to temper that with other voices inside the company, myself among them, saying let’s just be a little bit careful.
House also said he'd be happy if a "high single-digit percentage" of PlayStation 4 owners ends up buying PSVR. Clearly, Virtual Reality devices still very much belong to a small niche.
Meanwhile, he promised supply of PSVR headsets will improve by April, while Sony will begin selling the device in Latin America later this Fall.
Of course, great games can only accelerate PSVR's adoption. For example, House pointed out that Resident Evil 7 Biohazard's release doubled the average amount of time users spend using PSVR.
Resident Evil 7 so far is the only AAA game to fully support the device, paving the way for others in the future. Did you buy a PSVR headset yet and if so, what was your experience with it so far? Let us know in the comments below.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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