Interactive

Sony: Global PlayStation VR System Sales Pass 3 Million Units (SSN)

Sony’s PlayStation (PS) VR virtual reality system achieved another major milestone as worldwide sell-through to consumers passed 3 million, according to Mary Yee, VP of PS marketing at Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) America. Sales of PS VR games and other titles, meanwhile, reached 21.9 million, she said Aug. 16 in a PlayStation Blog post.

The PS VR title catalog now includes almost 340 games and other experiences globally and keeps growing, she pointed out, adding that upcoming Sony PS VR titles include “Astro Bot Rescue Mission” (Oct. 2), “Blood & Truth,” “Deracine” (from Sony and FromSoftware) and “Firewall Zero Hour” (Aug. 28). “Deracine” was one of the titles that Sony touted at E3 in June.

Other new PS VR games include Winking Entertainment’s “Unearthing Mars 2: The Ancient War,” scheduled for release Sept. 18, according to Eleanor Liu, that company’s marketing and PR manager. The first “Unearthing Mars,” from 2017, was her company’s first PS VR title, she noted in a separate PlayStation Blog post.

PS VR has been the top-selling VR headset to date, outpacing sales of devices from Facebook-owned Oculus, the HTC Vive and Samsung Gear VR, according to research company Statista. Citing TrendForce data from July, Statista said Sony shipped about 1.7 million PS VR units in 2017 and another 2 million globally in the first half of 2018 for a total of about 3.7 million.

That’s far more than the approximately 1.6 million Oculus headsets shipped (about 700,000 in 2017 and 900,000 in 2018), 1.1 million HTC Vive headsets shipped (about 500,000 in 2017 and 600,000 in 2018), 450,000 Microsoft headsets shipped (about 300,000 in 2017 and 150,000 in 2018) and 1.5 million other headsets shipped (about 500,000 in 2017 and 1 million in 2018).

It wasn’t immediately clear if the Oculus data factored in Samsung Gear VR, which was developed by Samsung in collaboration with Oculus and shipped in 2015. The Microsoft device (the HoloLens), unlike the others, is classified as a “mixed reality” headset.

Oculus declined to say how many headsets it had sold to date, while HTC, Microsoft and Samsung didn’t immediately comment.

The more than 3 million PS VR units sold by Sony was a “great” achievement, “but still too small to trigger a lot of investment in VR games,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter told the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) by email. He added: “The entirety of the market is probably less than 6 million headsets, so still way too small to matter. We are several years away from this becoming significant.”

IDC recently projected that VR headset sales will soar from 8.1 million in 2018 to 39.2 million by the end of 2022, representing a five-year compound annual growth of 48.1%. Although many people may think of VR as a consumer technology, IDC said it believed the commercial market is “equally important” and predicted it will grow from 24% of VR headset shipments in 2018 to 44.6% by 2022.)

To mark the PS VR milestone, Sony announced PS VR game discounts and the fall release dates of two new PS VR games, saying the boxing title “Creed: Rise to Glory” from Survios will launch for PS VR Sept. 25 and Archiact’s sci-fi first-person VR shooter “Evasion” will follow Oct. 9 for PS VR. “Creed: Rise to Glory” features the same title character as the MGM/New Line Cinema film “Creed II,” the latest movie in the “Rocky” film series, which is being released theatrically Nov. 21.

The top 10 most-played PS VR games to date have been “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR,” “PlayStation VR Worlds,” “Rec Room,” “Resident Evil 7: Biohazard,” “The Playroom VR,” “Job Simulator,” “Until Dawn: Rush of Blood,” “Batman: Arkham VR,” “Farpoint” and “Superhot VR,” according to Sony.

The popularity of Sony’s “PlayStation VR Worlds” can largely be attributed to the fact that it was included as part of the PS VR launch bundle when it went on sale in 2016.

Sony, meanwhile, is offering pre-order discounts of up to 20% on PS VR titles including “Bow to Blood” and “Torn,” as well as discounts of up to 40% (or 60% off for PS Plus members) on select digital games, including “Animal Force,” “Pixel Gear” and “Smashbox Arena.”

Sony’s VR headset was first announced by it in 2014 at the Game Developers Conference, under the codename “Project Morpheus.” The company said in 2015 that the product, which works in conjunction with its PS4 video game console, would be officially called PlayStation VR.

The company recently announced another milestone for PlayStation consoles overall, saying more than 525.3 million systems globally had been sold since the first PS console shipped in 1994.

To mark that milestone, Sony introduced a 500 Million Limited Edition PS4 Pro at $499.99, with only 50,000 units being made available globally, according to the company.