Nearly three years after consumer virtual reality became a real thing, the market is still trying to determine whether it’s a growing market niche or a dwindling technological fad. Entering into that debate this week comes Sony, which is now trumpeting 4.2 million PlayStation VR headset sales through March 3 of this year.
While 4.2 million is certainly a big number in and of itself, its actual import depends a lot on what you’re comparing it to. So to put Sony’s latest report in context, we’ve gathered a bevy of relevant comparison numbers for you to peruse in both chart and list form. Use this as a handy reference for your next debate about whether console virtual reality is a “dead end” or not.
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Fig. 1: Comparing an accessory like PSVR to standalone consoles isn't entirely fair. That said, this shows how the total audience for PSVR games is growing much more slowly than that for standard console experiences.
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Fig. 2: Public estimates show PlayStation VR roughly on par with the entirety of the fragmented PC VR headset market.
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Fig. 3: PSVR is somewhere in the Sega CD/32X range when it comes to attach rates, to give you some historical analogue for its popularity.
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Fig. 4: If you squint, you can see PSVR sales slowing down and then speeding up again over the years. All in all, though, they have been remarkably steady.
- 130 days: Time since release for PSVR to sell 915,000 headsets (~7K/day) (Source)
- 417 days: Time since release for PSVR to sell 2 million headsets (~4.8K/day) (Source)
- 673 days: Time since release for PSVR to sell 3 million headsets (~4.5K/day) (Source)
- 872 days: Time since release for PSVR to sell 4.2 million headsets (~4.8K/day) (Source)
- 43 days: Time since release for the PS4 to sell 4.2 million units (Source)
- 154 days: Time since release for the Xbox One to ship 5 million units (Source)
- 317 days: Time since release for the Wii U to sell 3.91 million units (Source)
- 4.08 million: Rough Superdata estimate for PSVR headset sales through the end of 2018
- 0.99 million: Rough Superdata estimate for Oculus Rift headset sales through the end of 2018
- 1.3 million: Rough Superdata estimate for HTC Vive headset sales through the end of 2018
- 4 million: Rough Nvidia estimate for total “PC VR” headset sales through the end of 2018
- 4.4%: Rough ratio of PSVR owners to PS4 owners (4.2M / 94.2M) (Source)
- 2.16%: Rough ratio of Sega 32X owners to Sega Genesis owners (0.665M / 30.75M; 32X sales through end of 1994) (Sources (1) (2))
- 7.2%: Rough ratio of Sega CD owners to Sega Genesis owners (2.24M / 30.75M) (Source)
- 31.5%: Rough ratio of original Kinect owners to Xbox 360 owners (24M / 76M as of Feb. 2013) (Source)
- 411,488: Estimate of unique Oculus Rift headsets connected to Steam in February 2019.
- 335,980: Estimate of unique HTC Vive headsets connected to Steam in February 2019.
- 85,012: Estimate of unique Windows Mixed Reality headsets connected to Steam in February 2019.
(Source: RoadToVR analysis of Steam survey results; updates through Feb. 2019 used with permission)
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