Premium VR Game Sales: Indie Hit Superhot Sells 164,000+ Copies for PC & PSVR, Far Outpacing Bethesda's Fallout 4 VR & Skyrim VR

New industry numbers from SuperData paint a pretty stark picture for premium VR content -- and low demand for "alternate world" games:

This chart just lists games that are only available for VR, and not those which come with a VR option; in other words, it paints the clearest picture of demand for VR-only content.  Notably, just one of the top VR games, Raw Data, is multiplayer. More notable: The top-selling VR game hits for 2017 sold hardly any copies at all: Fallout 4 VR and Skyrim VR, both from AAA studio Bethesda, grossed $4.7 million and $2.2 million, respectively. Each game retailed for roughly $59.99, so do some basic math, and you can see how few copies were actually sold:

Roughly 78,500 and 37,000 copies, respectively. This is painfully low: Both games have sold over 20 million copies each on PC and console. Yet somehow, of the ~ 2.4 million PSVR owners out there, less than 5% bought Skyrim VR. Fallout 4 VR did relatively better: of the ~700,000 Vive owners out there, some 11% of the market bought Fallout 4 VR. That's not bad, but for such a well-known title among hardcore gamers who own a Vive, I'd have expected sales closer to 20%+ of the market. Both Bethesda's games are incredibly renown for depicting vivid, fully-realized virtual worlds a player can spend 100+ hours playing and exploring in -- just the thing, you'd think, most premium VR owners would want to do. But it's likely that Bethesda has not yet made a profit on either game.

The only unambiguous hit? It's not one from a big publisher, and it's not a big virtual world:

Superhot, the great, "bullet time" shooter from a indie small indie publisher selling for about $25, sold roughly 164,000 copies on PC and PSVR last year. As you can see from the trailer above, Superhot has non-realistic, abstract graphics, and from a gameplay standpoint, the whole campaign can be completed in under 10 hours. (Or maybe a bit more, if you're like me and kept getting killed. On the goddamn. Last level. Which starts with a nearby dude right about to shoot you. For freaking ever.)

So, some possible takeaways to these numbers? I'd say these:

• Premium VR owners want shorter, more affordable game experiences. 
• Premium VR owners are mostly not attracted to major franchise titles.
• Premium VR owners mostly don't want to be in an immersive virtual game world for many many hours.

The last point is most surprising to me, but also the most comforting: I loved playing Skyrim on the PC, easily spent 60-80 incredibly enjoyable hours doing so, and I'd be very tempted to repeat that experience in VR -- if that didn't mean being literally blinded to the real world and loved ones for long stretches of time. I'm relieved most premium VR owners apparently feel the same, though I have to think Bethesda wishes otherwise.

Comments

[Amanda]

The major takeaway is that few people are interested in gaming with the current state of VR hardware.

[Faaborgs]

It does seem very curious that something as VR'is as RPG games does not seem to penetrate more into the VR scene.
But, even with millions of VR headsets sold, consumer VR is still very much in it infancy and none of us really have a sense of where VR gaming will go. In the end we might find that the traditional PC and console game types really does not convert to VR and the this medium will spawn it own game style and types.
I just hope that there will be enough money in VR game development to attract game designers to keep experiment with the genre.

[Jeremiah Bratton]

Superhot was available on every major headset. Skyrim is still a ps4 exclusive and fallout is a vive exclusive.

[Jim Jennings]

You make a lot of flawed assumptions in this article.

For one as Jeremiah pointed out, FO4VR and Skyrim VR were both only on a single platform each, how much more would they have sold if there were on both platforms? not a realistic comparison.

Second, both are old game that were re-released at FULL PRICE, i would imagine most people that would have an interest in the games already owned the non-vr version and have 100's of hours invested in them, who wants to pay full price for a game they already played to death, just for VR? Personaly id LOVE to get a NEW game like Skyrim or FO, I'd buy it in a heartbeat, but a re-release of the old ones?..... not so much.

Third, I seriously doubt they lost money, like i just said they are old games, they just ported them to VR, its not like they had a lot of development costs to recoup since they already existed.

Also, FO4VR comes FREE with the Vive headset, that might impact sales a bit....... plus they both still made more money then superhot, last i checked that's how most businesses measure success :P

[Jim Jennings]

oh and one more HUGE bit of data you totally ignored.
Superhot came out feb 2016,
FO4VR came out dec 12 2017
Skyrim VR came our Nov 17 2017

SO basically superhot made 164,000 sales with a FULL year to sell.
FO4 sold 78K copies in HALF A MONTH
and Skyrim sold 37K copies in a month and a half.

Did you even try researching this article???

[Metal Bee]

Hey guys, I'm the Metal Bee and today I continue my gameplay with the chaos and bullet time fun that is SUPERHOT. In part 2 we continue the Story mode and get to some absolutely crazy levels. I have to admit the story is a bit crazy so far but I have a feeling it will come together in the final. Thank you for watching.

Video in the link below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrU-lenzah0

Don't forget to comment, share, like and subscribe to Metal Bee:
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Share this video : https://youtu.be/VrU-lenzah0

[Metal Bee]

Hey guys, I'm the Metal Bee here and today I'll be playing SUPERHOT but with a small twist. The twist is that whenever I die, I'll be sticking tape on my face. Thank you for watching and hope you enjoy the video.

Video in the link below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms-M7addwuE

Don't forget to comment, share, like and subscribe to Metal Bee:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVCMdSPdYI9Y9USA-ViKIKw?sub_confirmation=1

Share this video : https://youtu.be/Ms-M7addwuE