Oculus Go Slow: 2018 Sales of Standalone VR HMD Fall Far Below Forecast

New report from Superdata on the VR/AR market shows slow growth for most VR devices, with the high end rigs (Rift, Vive) mired in six figure range of total sales for 2018. Playstation VR remains the main market leader with about 1.5 million units total sold last year. Which is a lot in relative terms, but it also means VR headset sales still trail far, far, far behind console sales in general -- the PS 4 sold nearly 6 million units in just the 2018 holiday season alone.

The standalone Oculus Go VR headset saw a notable uptick in sales during the holidays, with Superdata noting, "The product’s ease-of-use and $199 price point made the Oculus Go attractive to first-time VR headset buyers, pushing device sales to 1M units since its launch in May 2018." However, that's well below Superdata's own forecast for the device last year:

Superdata sees a market forming for the Oculus Go stand-alone VR headset. The market intelligence firm's latest quarterly cross-reality report on the VR, AR, and MR scene forecasts 2018 shipments of 1.81 million for the just-launched $200 device.

That would make it the market-leading headset of the year outside of the $20 Google Cardboard shell. Superdata expects the next best performing headset to be the PlayStation VR with 1.47 million sold, followed at a distance by Samsung Gear VR shipments of 590,000.

That from a May 2018 forecast.  So Go sales in 2018 were about 40% below what was originally forecast, with PlayStation VR remaining the market leader. Go's holiday sales spike might be the beginning of steady growth, but for now, market interest in a standalone VR is still highly debatable.

Comments

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

I think I mentioned in a comment years ago that I expected PSVR to be the eventual market leader.

It's basically due to two things.

the first is Barriers to entry, the PSVR is an "affordable" entry into VR space.

The second is software, while PSVR doesn't have some of the VR software the PC based solutions do, it has the VR experiences that are most enjoyable to actually PLAY. Though a few developers have been hedging their bets and adding the ability to play them without PSVR. Star Trek Bridge Crew and Eve: Valkyrie are notable for that.

I want to try a PSVR rig, I even already have the PS4 camera and a move controller (and the move navigation controller) from the PS3. But... I'm not sure how it will work with my vision issues. Also it's not sold unbundled AFAIK, all I need is the headset, not anything else.

[Zen CaptureAll]

Fixed it.

https://i.imgsafe.org/70/708e6032de.png