Sony Playstation VR Sales & Usage Underwhelming So Far

Virtual Winter is coming, if it's not already here:

[T]here’s early evidence that the PSVR’s sales figures may not have been to the company’s liking. There was little mention of VR or upcoming VR titles at the PlayStation Experience last month, and Sony’s Kaz Hirai has refused to give concrete figures, saying: “We’ve always said it’s going to be a slow start, unfortunately, we did produce a lot of units but we ran out of stock in some retailers, but I think based on reports coming out of the holiday season, we’re actually happy with the numbers. One of the reasons we’re not talking about the numbers so much is because we don’t want the numbers to take a life of their own.” Independent tracking firm SuperData Research has revised their estimate of PSVR sales to 750,000, down from 2.6 million, though that initial figure was extremely optimistic...

It's not just that sales are slow, but most hardcore gamers who are supposed to be VR's first market don't seem especially enthused:

Capcom’s Resident Evil 7 [Review: 9/10] might be the biggest game to support VR yet, and a significant chunk of people are opting to play it this way. That is according to Capcom’s ResidentEvil.net (RE.net), a hub site that gathers player statistics not just for its latest release but the entire series. When you first boot up the game on PlayStation 4, you can opt-in to contributing your data to an online pool of statistics, keeping track of factors like total time spent playing and total distance traveled. It also follows how many people are playing the game with Sony’s PlayStation VR headset.

"Significant" is one way to put it -- less than 10% is an even more accurate way. This for one of the most well-known hardcore gamer franchises with a VR option. But if only 1 in 10 hardcore gamers are opting into VR, how much less will the rest of population opt in?

Comments

[OkinSama]

Give 2017 a chance, this is the year all the big VR games are coming out. That will do wonders for VR adoption.

[Carlos Loff]

A simple Playstation 4 unit offers a lot for less than what it costs the VR, not mentioning you have to buy the camera separately and is not cheap - The VR hype is becoming ridiculous and right now is only fed by sales folks - Ridiculous because they are all spreading expensive Ferraries and there are not even basic roads, more the less highways where to drive them - Bring many and good content and than sell the damm googles

[larposan]

This makes no sense. How can sales be underwhelming when it's sold out and literally impossible to get even in Sony's home country Japan? We'll see how the sales numbers line up once the units are actually available to buyers.

[Wagner J Au]

"How can sales be underwhelming when it's sold out and literally impossible to get even in Sony's home country Japan?"

Could be Sony under-produced units that are localized for the Japanese market. We do know Sony is saying sales had a "slow start" and refusing to give concrete numbers - rarely a good sign.