While Sony has proudly showed off PS4 sales numbers, they’ve held back on sales numbers for the PlayStation VR headset. Until now.
In an interview with new York Times, Sony CEO Andrew House revealed that the VR headset has sold 915,000 units to date since it launched back in October 2016.
And those are good sales numbers for Sony, according to House.
He added that if PS VR could sell 10% of what the PS4 sells, Sony would be “very happy”. That translates about 6 million units, as the PS4 has sold 60 million (unofficially) by now.
And while Oculus and HTC haven’t announced sales numbers for their VR headsets, most analysts expect them to be around the number of what the PS VR is: around a million units to date, each.
In the eyes of many, PlayStation VR looked to be the headset with the best chance to truly make a dent on mainstream gaming. Being tied to a single device, particularly one as popular as the PS4, has perhaps given Sony the chance to create an easy – and cost-effective – way for users to get into VR gaming, away from the more involved experiences from other headsets on the market. It’s certainly paid off from a critical standpoint, with the headset’s ease of use leading some to suggest that Virtual Reality is here to stay.
Of course, for PS VR to truly become a permanent fixture in gaming, the device will need to deliver more on the content side to keep users occupied. PlayStation VR released with a strong list of launch titles, but future games will need to have more depth in order to avoid “coasting on novelty” – an issue with VR gaming that Oculus CTO John Carmack recently warned against. Should Sony manage to keep content at a high quality, then perhaps PS VR could find a solid place in gaming culture.