Shock Stat: In 2017, VR Headset Shipments for Most Top Brands Went DOWN Compared to 2016

SuperData has an excellent free new report of game industry sales for 2017, which includes the most important figure forecasting the future of the virtual reality industry: In three words, worse than slow.

In many more words: 2017 sales of "full VR" rigs were flat or even negative, with Rift shipping slightly more HMDs in 2016 than 2017, and HTC Vive shipping less last year than the year before.  

Far as mobile-based VR, Google Daydream also saw slower shipments, as did Samsung Gear. (Though Gear VR remains far and away the market leader, with well over 8 million total shipments).

Looking at SuperData's data, the only unambiguous success in VR hardware sales goes to Playstation VR, which nearly doubled in shipments from 2016 to 2017, earning just under 2.5 million total shipments last year. (Which still means only 3% of Playstation 4 owners bought the VR headset it was created for.)

Hopefully these numbers start causing alarm bells to go off in the VR industry, because they promise a fallow season for many years to come. Personally I expected VR headset sales to grow slightly in 2017, so I'm pretty surprised to see them go down for 3 of 5 leading rigs.

I'll give the final word to SuperData, which reports these bad numbers as tactfully as possible:

As VR became a known entity, headset manufacturers relied on a mix of price cuts and compelling content to drive sales in 2017. Oculus boosted Rid shipments by 34% thanks to aggressive discounts during the year. Meanwhile, PlayStation VR gained momentum with franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Resident Evil. However, 2017 still lacked a wide variety of monetizable non-game content, which limited overall revenue.

More hardware and software makers turned their focus to enterprise as they wait for consumer adoption to grow. Immersive technology is already saving businesses money and improving efficiency in fields ranging from architecture to medicine. For example, carmakers like GM use VR to prototype car designs before investing the time to build physical models. Training is the top business use case for VR, and 56% of enterprise customers utilize the technology for this purpose.

I.E. VR is not a viable consumer medium (at least not yet).

Comments

[Shiv VASISHT]

Not everything finds its use as intended. If people thought that gaming is the way forward, then they will have to wait long to get traction. I personally believe that there is more to be gained by moving away from what I call the "Id satisfier" and looking for uses in other, must-have-to-meet-serious-need categories: Healthcare, education, simulator-training - these are the points of discovery, and of sustainability of the category - companies investing in these will find the room to make mistakes, get real feedback and make better products that will survive changing tastes and fancies. Consider this: The Hummer Vs the Humvee. I would stretch this to self-driving cars - surely all this AI tech could be tested by shipping and airline companies before they decide to put driverless cars on the roads. And if you have to move forward, it will begin with gated communities like residential homes and hospitals and airports (yes, there are real driverless cars speeding around Ca, but traction...?). To me, no surprises, here.

[Guybendov]

It is a shame that Google did not back up Cardboard more. They had such a good momentum.

[Dirk]

Classic hype cycle stuff. I wrote about VR illness (like motion sickness) and found that at least 10% of the population can't adapt to VR. Stats like that will predict a slide into a niche market at best. We've been teased with VR since the Oculus Rift Dev kit 1 showed up, and we were told it would be just around the corner... next year... VR is the biggest thing since sliced bread... Nope.

[Afterdark9090]

Well; probably Cory sold Zuckerberg on Oculus Rift and made a tidy profit.

[TonyVT Skarredghost]

I too expected a growing trend and I'm surprised by these data. But I'm not surprised by the fact that 2017 was a bad year for VR: every journalist has talked bad about this technology saying that it is dead... and this has influenced the audience

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

One of the reasons Sony is selling more headsets is because PSVR is THE least expensive entry point into a full INTERACTIVE non-mobile VR experience. Not only that but Sony has most of the better VR content.

That said, some VR content on PS4 has a non-VR option as well. Relatively recently both EVE Valkyrie and Star Trek Bridge Crew gained the option to play them without PSVR.

[Leocomerford]

In many more words: 2017 sales of "full VR" rigs were flat or even negative, with Rift shipping slightly more HMDs in 2016 than 2017, and HTC Vive shipping less last year than the year before.

By those numbers, PC VR sales are only down in 2017 if you exclude Windows MR. That seems a bit arbitrary, as the Odyssey at least is apparently a fairly decent system overall.

Again by these figures, sales of all PC and console VR systems are up except for the most expensive, the Vive, which was $800 US for most of 2017. That seems to support optimism that future PC VR price reductions will improve sales: especially an end to the cryptocoin-driven GPU cost (and availability) crisis.

It also has to be said that people with inside information have publicly expressed skepticism about the SuperData numbers: https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/959172783765729280