PlayStation VR Controls Market Share Over Oculus, Vive
By Kyle Sledge 25 November 2016
According to market research, Sony Interactive Entertainment already controls the market share with its PlayStation VR headset dominating Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
After having been named one of the best inventions of the year by TIME Magazine, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s PlayStation VR seems primed to dominate the domain of virtual reality hardware. Despite having only been available for about a couple of months since its launch in October, the product has already become the VR headset with the biggest market share over other pieces of hardware such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
As determined by research carried out by 01consulting – a market research company that’s been recording data for “the past few months” – and originally reported on by the outlet VentureBeat, Sony’s current market share is estimated at around 30 percent, followed by 11 percent for Oculus Rift, and 6 percent for HTC Vive. The report contains estimates based on sales from over 30 companies and 40 products worldwide, with PlayStation VR seemingly being the leading product in its field.
As seen in the data set below, the rest of the market consists of other companies with VR technology, but not necessarily hardware, with Epic Games, Unity, and Crytek also being included. Even so, it’s evident that Sony holds a huge portion of the market with 30% in its grasp.
Furthermore, the report also took into account revenue, in addition to units sold for each vendor. Apparently, the lead in the market that Sony currently holds is due to the more inexpensive price point for the PlayStation VR headset, as well as the massive install base that the PS4 platform provides. Interestingly, more modest options such as Google Cardboard have much less of a share in the market at only 8 percent, due to the smaller install base.
Before this particular report was published, the gaming industry research firm SuperData lowered its expectations for sales in 2016 for Sony’s PlayStation VR headset from 2.6 million units sold to less than 750,000, which could be inaccurate considering 01consulting’s findings. Another analyst group, IHS Markit had its sales projection for this year being somewhat higher, predicting that there would be 1.4 million PlayStation VR units sold, which would generate $134 million in VR entertainment spending this year.
Of course, with there still being a little less than a month to go before the year finishes, concrete numbers on exactly how many PlayStation VR headsets will sell before 2016 is over is still up in the air. Nevertheless, Sony CFO Kenichiro Yoshida previously went on record to discuss the sales of PS VR headset, and despite giving solid figures, he offered a positive update on sales for the device, saying that sales are “on track.” Should the research from 01consulting be an accurate assessment of the market shares thus far, then Yoshida’s claims are an understatement, as the data lends credence to the notion that PlayStation VR will be the hardware that makes virtual reality a mainstay in the gaming medium.
PlayStation VR is available now.
