It’s big news for Sony today, as the official launch of the PlayStation VR has seen the company’s headset seemingly shift more units than the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift.
Though Sony hasn’t released official sales for the new virtual reality headset, the company’s president and chief executive Jim Ryan spoke to CNBC regarding its launch, saying that they would be forced to “ramp up production” as early figures indicate the PSVR will sell “many hundreds of thousands” of units at launch.
The sales figures
Despite the company not revealing exact numbers, when you compare this estimate with the launch of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift it becomes clear that the PlayStation VR is likely to enjoy a more successful launch. In July 2016, 3 months after the Vive’s launch, it was reported that Steam sales indicated the headset was nearing an install base of 100,000. This same data had also indicated that the Oculus Rift had sold fewer units than the Vive, though Oculus CEO Palmer Luckey disputed its accuracy, saying that it did not accurately reflect the Rift’s sales and was not representative of the headset’s install base.
However, regardless of Luckey’s claims, the numbers outlined by Steam did provide a very rough estimate of how many units of the Vive and Rift have been shifted, and it seems that the PSVR has managed to outdo them both. Ryan stated that pre-order data of the PlayStation VR had indicated that interest in the headset was “significant,” with the company making the decision “to further increase capacity at the back end of 2016 and into 2017.”
This will be heartening news for early PlayStation VR adopters, with the PSVR’s launch success meaning the company is more likely to increase support of the hardware. Though the headset has received praise from critics, it is currently suffering from the lack of a killer app, with its software library notably lacking at the time of this writing. Hopefully these positive early signs for the hardware will lead to us receiving more substantial VR games in the near future.
