Putting 4.2m PSVRs into context.

Your posts are a VR car crash lol

@TheEroica:

Maybe I'm missing the point of the thread... PSVR, near as I can tell (considering I have one), is an add-on which requires a primary piece of hardware to operate.

With that in mind, it wouldn't be comparable to a standalone console. Even when comparing the 32x or Sega CD it still has more units sold than those two add-ons combined?

As a comparison, Sega CD was my first CD player, similar to how my PS2 was my first DVD player, and PS3 my first Blu-Ray player.

Is the point that is successful as an add-on or that it isn't? Because the only add-on that actually sold better all around was the Kinect. I also don't recall the Sega CD being considered a failure so I'm very confused by this thread and what is trying to be conveyed.

Anyway, the best way to tell if something is a "failure" is to determine if it is still being supported by the company...

@michaelmikado: the point of the thread was to present relevant data to look at when determining the success of psvr... Its not a bashing thread or a praise thread. It's information.... As I said in the end of the op, it's on you guys to spin the numbers to make them mean what you want them to mean... Im just looking at it like it's data with some interesting context....

Add official PC support and it will sell double that number.

Great numbers for both an accessory and new tech. Glad vr is doing well it obviously has an audience and is here to stay. Can't wait to buy a next gen headset too and enjoy the most immersive gaming experiences out there bar none. Suck it haters :)

@TheEroica:It's niche, but I think a lot has to do with the cost.

@commander: cost is definitely an issue as to why it isn't a highly saturated product, but alot of those comparative products were cost prohibitive against their home console. Sega CD was a premium expensive add on when it dropped.

@i_p_daily said:

@that_old_guy said:

According to @i_p_daily PSVR is not niche.

So your whole post is moot and therefore PSVR is a total and complete success whichever way you look at it.

Your posts are a VR car crash lol

:P

Call me a sucker but hey I loved my sega cd too. Mega cd I mean :) watching movies like they were viewed through a sock was cutting edge at the time lol I've probably watched night trap more times than I've seen predator or alien at this point.

I love my psvr too. Looking forward to nms vr, sairento and blood and truth next.

Who said I listed all minigames? See this is your issue, you seem to think VR is all about minigames even though I listed full length games with Beat Saber being an exception as it's more of a party game but still tons of fun nonetheless.

How does it make any sense comparing vr with a console or kinetic that was bundled with the Xbox??

If people have 300$ to entertainment they obv not going to use them on a PSVR but rather a PS4...

The biggest problem with VR is the killer apps have not moved to the platform. Coolyfett thinks everyone wants to see gaming advance to the next level, but First Person games is really the only way that will work. The Call of Dutys, DOOMs, Overwatches, Bioshocks have to move to the platform almost exclusively. Right now none of the games look fun and they all look like experiments and not games. Nintendo & PlayStation both have an opportunity to make changes to the platform, but they must leave experiment mode & take some real chances with well known titles.

@TheEroica: Some people love it but my father and nephew loved Kinect. So what?

When these are more affordable, cordless, lighter and you don't need an external camera and Wiimote rip offs then it'll be more adopted.

The first lines of the OP are unmistakable cross-hairs. The comparison to Sega CD (or even worse, the 32x), a largely unsuccessful add on despite having some good games, is also an unequivocal jab. Given its recent sales milestone announcement, thats some damage control.

Here's the context: It's the highest selling Gaming VR headset by a longshot. It's also weaker and cheaper than (most of) its competitors. This analysis could be performed on any of the headsets. Instead, it is aimed at PSVR.
It's an expensive add on for emerging tech, similar to its PC-only counterparts. Similar to Sega CD, it is a shoe-in to emerging technology, which is gaining interest among developers (could link articles indicating developer interest, but I'm sure you've seen them). CD technology took off the following generations, and we should expect VR to find its place as well.

Hopefully this airs the fog out, and you can understand why someone would be confused that a person would even make some of the comparisons here.

I think this is also an important take away. It is an emerging technology that was just "added" to a primary system. Future iterations of emerging tech will look very different in utility and implementation. It's not to say VR will take over gaming, nor that VR will die a horrible death. Rather, that it will have it's place in gaming as it matures.

@TheEroica: I'm not here to troll the numbers nor none of that nonsense between Cows & Lems here. I do want to point this out. PSVR (and that goes for the rest of VR in general) is still the only VR on current-gen console (until Nintendo releases their own VR headset) making those numbers impressive to say the least and let's not forgot VR in itself is still in the early stages of it's life. Nobody said it would be easy to sell due to pricing and it's totally understandable. Again, those PSVR numbers are great and despite it's a slow process, it's going to be a very long time for VR to be mainstream but as of now, VR isn't ready for prime time but maybe ready whenever next-gen consoles arrives. I also want to see what MS comes up with their own VR for Xbox Scarlet.

@djoffer: Xbox 360 had a 60 million console user base when kinect launched... it was sold as a 100 dollar add on separately and was also bundled into console offerings. It's false to say every kinect is a bundled purchase.

I'm glad it's doing so well! Can not wait for No Man's Sky and Dreams to get VR support.

@X_CAPCOM_X: I presented the article as it was presented to the masses.... An indication of notable numbers, statistics and graphs... The opening line is just the hook.... The end of the op clearly states that its on system wars to spin the numbers to mean what you think it means.... None of this is devaluing the psvr, just commenting on its success based on other notable hardware in the industry.

A meager percentage of PS4 owners. Like with their exclusives, PSVR only matters to a very small portion of the 80 million PS4 owners.

Selling through to 5% of your install base is not a good number.

PSVR is too expensive and no one wants to put that nerdy shiz on their head and face.

Irony is the defining feature here. You are of course talking about VR.

If anyone from the UK is interested, I saw that ao.com are doing the V2 PSVR headset, camera and Playstation Worlds game for £169. It's OOS at them moment, but should be available again soon.

Not bad considering it launched at £349 and this is the refined model with better cable management and stuff.

Yes it's decidedly popular.

It's like VR is in its Atari 2600 or PS1 days, depending on what want to use. But it is early (2016 retail debut for Oculus Rift, Vive and PSVR. No well-known franchises or mascots to bring over. Hard sell with the need to buy hardware or video cards & RAM & USB extenders in addition to the VR headset. Need to place sensors that will take up space in a room. People aren't used to this, and entry into VR is asking quite a lot. Way more than Kinect or other peripherals.

PSVR is (roughly) doubling its numbers every year, and projected to do the same at the end of 2019. Judged by other record-breaking peripherals and consoles, no it's not up there in numbers obviously. But for something that was supposed to be a fad, dead, flop, or last-place-loser, it's doing much better than what people have been saying.

• February 2017 - 915,000 headsets
• December 2017 - 2 million
• August 2018 - 3 million
• March 2019 - 4.2 million

It's likely going to slow down next year only because I see people anticipating a PSVR 2 for the Playstation 5, and the generation is winding down.

If I were a VR developer (even for Oculus Rift, Vive or WMR) I'd be extremely pleased that there's another 4.2 million VR players in the ecosystem. I'd want more awareness, positive word of mouth and encouraging signs of future growth down the line.

The people who make Rec Room are leaning on investor money and don't ask for microtransactions. They are making updates and doing everything for free. If I were them, I would love the fact there's another VR platform out there selling 4.2 million to help their game stay alive. The question you should be asking is whether Oculus, Sony and Valve made a good stepping stone for the next generation of VR around 2020 or so, coming from basically nothing. Not everything turned out perfect, but I think they did a fairly good job establishing a foothold. I see less people saying VR is a fad, and more of cynics accepting that VR is here to stay.

yes that is true, but the sega cd didn't bring that much too the table because it was severly gimped by the home console. Don't forget that the cd/dvd/blue ray became standard afterwards.

It's debatable that the psvr doesn't bring much more to the table than the sega cd (some people may laugh at this but back in the nineties a bit better sound and graphics went a long way), but it kinda suffers from the same handicap, and that is the console that is gimping it.

But that's not even the worst thing with the psvr, it has inherently a lot more flaws than the pcvr headsets. Flaws that hamper a proper vr experience. A lot of games i see on the psvr is just nausea inducing for the most of us and the reason is that they don't have right tools to cater the same games as the pc does, or in the same way.

and it pretty much comes down to that second camera, which you need to have 360 degree experience. Sure you can play skyrim vr with snap turning or even normal turning but that already gimps the experience a lot , not to mention it can make people feel nauseaus as well. Add to that the tracking with natural light which isn't perfect either, and a console that has trouble to produce 2011 graphics in vr (draw distance sucks on the psvr) and yes I can understand people not willing to pay that amount of money for it, and even not realizing that it can be done way better.

The pc does do it properly but if you don't have a good pc , you're looking at a 1000$ quickly for your whole setup.

But even then it's always going to have a niche factor imo, it's not going to replace pancake gaming, since if you want to avoid motion sickness alltogehter for most people you need roomscale and 360 degree movement. Not to mention a lot of people don't want to be cut off like that from reality as well.

Stil your post is giving a warped view at this point, vr is going to become way more popular, but for that we need more accesible headsets, and that means vr for consoles, and the psvr is too handicapped to give a good idea of how popular it would be.

@whatafailure: no, I think the question for the future of vr is "can they implement it without developing exclusively for it. We all use cod controls for fps games, triggers for racing games etc. We need to find to a way that a game like cod can have vr enabled by just connecting the head set, not making an entire game for it. If it becomes an option, like a steering wheel or arcade stick, it can be massive. But that's not the question for this thread so I'm just rambling.

@i_p_daily: it includes a hot girlfriend?

You got it!

@commander said:

A lot of games i see on the psvr is just nausea inducing for the most of us and the reason is that they don't have right tools to cater the same games as the pc does, or in the same way.

I haven't gotten sick playing a PSVR game yet, Skryim VR, Rigs Mechanized Combat League, Eve Valkyrie etc. I did get a little woozy with Wipeout VR, but that was because I turned off the camera aids. I enjoyed getting woozy though and thought it was fun as I was having a sensory system overload.

@commander said:

it pretty much comes down to that second camera, which you need to have 360 degree experience.

I've seen you post this 3 times now. The PSVR headset has a sensor in the back of the headset so you can still look behind you and see what is there in most games anyway, not sure about GT Sport. I know Skryim etc you can look behind you. I don't spend a lot of time looking behind me anyway, but it is a nice feature.

There is no arguing PC has the better VR, but for various reasons PS VR is and was ideal for me. Instead of saying PSVR has no 360 experience you should replace that with 50-60% of the games don't look as good as they could.

The way I spin the numbers why PSVR doesn't have a relatively high attachment rate with an 80 million install base is

The PSVR is more appealing/intended to be played with the PS4 Pro so you want to see how many Pro owners bought a PSVR. It is just an added bonus that it works on a regular PS4 to a lesser degree I have read.

If I didn't already have a Pro I would've never bought a PSVR because I wanted the best console VR experience I could have. I would've waited for PS5 and PSVR2.

Considering how tough it is to market VR (you kinda have to experience it to believe it), and it having some competition, I am not disappointed with 4.2 million sales. It's not a cheap device either, and it's not super easy to set up. You need the camera too. I think that's a decent number of sales all things considered.

well you may not be prone to motion sickness, most people are, the extent varies, but games like eve valkyrie, wipeout and gt sport. Stuff like that is not for everyone because of the motion sicknes. First person games like skyrim, robo recall, fallout 4 the motion sickness can be solved by using teleporting and roomscale tech. But even some people get motion sick because the tracking is not perfect, and because of too much reprojection.

and it doesn't matter you have a sensor on the back of your camera. Your motion controllers are blocked by your own body when you turn your back to the camera, higher placement of the camera could be a big help but it's far from ideal, there are still a lot of blind spots. Add to that the tracking that isn't perfect and it could be a very frustrating experience for a lot of people.

the psvr upscales from 60 hz to 120hz as well with reprojection, and again that can add to the motion sickness or just an annoying feeling overall because the world around simply act odd when you turn. It doesn't feel natural.

Of course for sitting down vr this all doesn't matter that much, even with games like skyrim if you use snap turn and teleport it suffers a lot less from reprojection. It also doesn't suffer that much from the tracking tech, because it mostly relies on the gyroscope then. But snap turning gimps the experience a lot, and analog turning could induce motion sickness.

Seated it's also a bit odd since you're standing in a wolrd, you could stand, but then you need something to orient yourself in vr so you keep facing the camera. You could use the controller but that's not the same anymore either.

Playing skyrim (or any first person games) on the pc standing with roomscale is a whole other experience. Not to mention the graphics of course.

So yeah a pcvr headset is a whole other animal than the psvr, the psvr is built for a seated experience, pcvr headsets support roomscale and 360° vr, they have perfect tracking and a minimum of reprojection. Combine that with the teleport option to move and you nullify motion sickness for pretty much everyone.

that doesn't mean the psvr can't be a good headset for some people, but the sales certainly don't give the right idea how popular vr can be.

People prefer their games made for VR rather than ported. This goes doubly so for FPS games. Ports can still be amazing and way better in VR, but people will always demand more. If CoD gets VR support down the road, people might enjoy it and it might even be really good, but then people will demand a full VR exclusive CoD because they want them to take it further.

Well she may be hot, but she's pushing you into traffic so she's not that into you lol.

Yes, it's still better to have a game made for VR exclusively. The problem with simply porting over COD is the pacing for a VR game is different, and a lot of work still has to be done (Gearbox said they had to do a LOT of under-the-hood tinkering and testing to get Borderlands 2 VR working right, and had to pore through the entire game).

Also, since COD is very scripted in certain sections where you are meant to be looking at your fellow soldiers, you could completely miss things in VR, since you can now look 360 degrees. But looking around 360 degrees can be tiresome. So impactful moments have to be rethought for the VR crowd to direct their gaze and attention.

There's always exceptions to this, as I think a slower-paced FPS like Half Life 2 works very well with VR. I get what you're saying -- if they can make a normal version and a free VR version, that could help VR get a lot of big titles. But I think a lot of games (you name them: God of War, RDR2, COD, Madden, Mario, Zelda) would all need extra work to figure out how to translate the regular game to VR, and it would not be as simple as 'flipping a switch'

@i_p_daily: she’s in VR too. So our love isn’t real to begin with.

We just want each other for our Lawnmower minds.

@KBFloYd: Haha fair enough, i didn't read the topic, just the tittle :p

Anyway, i do think that 4 million units, for something that is not required to play games, is pretty good. Lets not forget that the only possible way to promote VR is by putting it in people's heads. Youtube, TV adds, etc do very little to explain how it actually feels.

Sega CD 4 life!