Oculus Go Sells Only ~ 100-200K Units in First Month on Market

The standalone Oculus Go VR headset hit the market around the first of May, a complete VR system (no PC hook-up required) selling for just $199, and was widely touted as the device best positioned for mass market success. Sales, however, still seem slow. In the /Oculus conference, "Heaney555" makes an educated guess of under 200,000 units based on publicly known numbers:

To set up Oculus Go, you use the companion app on your iPhone or Android phone...  The Oculus Go app for Android is currently in the 50K - 100K downloads category... So taking the 50K-100K number for Android and doubling it to account for iPhone, we get 100K - 200K Go's sold already.

Less than 200,000 is not nothing, but it's lagging from the initial forecast from top industry analyst SuperData, which predicted 1.81 million units sold for 2018. Hardware sales are typically strongest in the first few weeks and then remain flat until the holidays -- so Oculus Go's holiday season will need to see a miraculous sales spike, to meet that forecast.

By point of contrast, here's what sales of highly desired consumer hardware products focused on delivering 3D interactive content looks like:

• Nintendo Switch sales, first month on the market: 2.74 million units
• Nintendo Switch sales, first nine months on the market: 10 million units
• Xbox One sales, first 10 months on the market: 7 million units
• Playstation 4 sales, first 11 months on the market: 13.5 million units

So even Superdata's bullish 1.8 million-in-2018 forecast for Oculus Go pales in comparison to these numbers. If Facebook is smart, they'll package Oculus Go with pre-installed copies of Beat Saber and other hit indie games for the 2018 holidays.

Comments

[TonyVT Skarredghost]

SuperData is famous for overshooting the forecasts. And you can't compare a new technology like the Go with devices in a mature market like Consoles.

I think that those numbers are good numbers.