Sony Interactive Entertainment’s global chief executive, Andrew House, recently sat down with the New York Times and confirmed that the PSVR is selling better than the company had expected: over 900,000 PSVR headsets in just four months.
If you were to believe the counter-hype in mid-January, you’d think Sony’s PlayStation VR was already a failed product. Multiple outlets ran stories suggesting that Sony may have given up on the PSVR headset before giving it a real shot. Of course, that suggestion didn’t make any sense. Why would Sony spend nearly a decade developing a product only to bail on it three months later?
The hysteria about Sony abandoning the PSVR stemmed largely from the lack of units on store shelves and limited holiday marketing, but that is a false equivalency. Sony didn’t need to spend large sums on advertisements for the PSVR because the kits are selling out everywhere. In fact, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s top brass said that people are “lining up outside stores” to wait for shipments to arrive.
House told the NYT that consumer demand is outpacing Sony’s internal sales goals for the PSVR. He said the company anticipated selling 1 million PSVR units in the first six months, but consumers have already snatched up 915,000 headsets in four months. At this point, and at this rate, besting that estimate is probably a foregone eventuality. (Those sales numbers are from February 19, so there could be 1 million PSVR in the wild already.)
The high volume of sales resulted in a shortage of hardware, which could continue for two more months if consumer demand doesn’t wane, and we wouldn’t expect it to. Titles like Resident Evil VII are driving more people to consider PlayStation VR every day. House told the NYT that the supply of headsets will increase in April. It sounds like Sony is preparing to double down on VR, not give up on it.
The Sony PlayStation VR connects to your PlayStation 4 console to play virtual reality games. The headset is available as a complete bundle with PS Move controllers and a PlayStation Camera for $499. You can also get the headset as a standalone device for $399, but you need a PlayStation camera to use the headset. Read our review of the bundle package here.
