It’s also important to note that the Pro headsets listed in the sale are the older Pro models. The newer Pro 2 model was announced in May alongside the enterprise-focused HTC Vive Focus 3. Those newer headsets remain at full price, with the headset-only model of the Pro 2 available for £659 and the full Pro 2 kit available for £1299.
Digital Trends recently published a report entitled ‘VR is in a tailspin, and the sales numbers prove it’. It seems HTC has taken umbrage with the article’s thesis in its newest blog post however, which pushes back against some of the article’s claims, saying it’s “not the whole story.”
Very few major manufacturers have released sales data on their VR headsets, with Sony being the exception when they said that PSVR had already sold over 2 million units back in December 2017. To fill the informational void, analysts typically offer up their best estimates, using third-party services to corral the numbers into what appears to be a solid answer to the question: how is ‘X’ market doing?
Freelance writer Joshua Fruhlinger, who occasionally writes for Digital Trends, used third-party Amazon sales data to back up his claim that consumers don’t care about VR anymore, saying it’s “crystal clear.” The entirety of Fruhlinger’s claims are based on Amazon sales data obtained by Thinkium, an analytics firm that runs a blog-style front end to sell its services, of which Fruhlinger is publisher. Amazon does provide a good watermark for how any given product is faring, but it’s not everything, HTC says.
The article cites a sharp decline in Vive’s ranking in the top-100 products on Amazon, which Thinkium data says was in the top-50 products at it height of popularity. HTC however punches back by reminding him that it’s actually been out of stock due to the shortage of a key component, which is why sales on the original Vive appeared to have slumped so rapidly.
Image courtesy Thinkium
The report also specifies Gear VR’s decline in sales performance on Amazon. HTC posits however that these sorts of VR experiences have become “less enticing,” and that Gear VR’s initial success was due to it being offered in promotional deals with new flagship smartphones, which have since cooled down.
HTC however doesn’t attempt to debunk the article’s claims surrounding PSVR or Oculus Go, which may be more of a reflection of its unwillingness to discuss direct competitors in polite company. Thinkium data puts PSVR at the mediocre 83 spot on Amazon, and Oculus Go falling from number seven to below 100 on the product ranking list since its launch in May 2018 (not October 2017 as the Digital Trends article reports).
The newest crop of standalone VR headsets – Oculus Go, HTC Vive Focus, Lenovo Mirage Solo [left to right]“More and more, as people begin to understand the possibilities for virtual applications, word of mouth will grow, and sales will continue their upward trajectory,” HTC says, defending its position. “In the VR industry, it’s important to not only move units, but to ensure that we have a growth path for customers and our business over time.”
This is fine, but the only thing to really put these contradictory claims to rest is verifiable sales numbers, something HTC has elected not to do in response to critiques. Instead, the company cites a different analytics firm to back up its claim that its internal HTC Vive team is leading the VR market, presumably worldwide.
Image courtesy HTC
While the Digital Trends piece comes stock with a grippy headline, in the end, Fruhlinger isn’t really saying VR is doomed by default, only that today’s VR headsets have failed to capture the promise of resounding sales—something most people knew from day one anyway. Case in point: only a few online VR games maintain healthy active user numbers, which is clearly due to a small install base relative to traditional consoles and PC gaming; PSVR, having sold 2 million units, pales in comparison to PS4 console sales, which have topped more than 73.6 million units since December 2017.
As for software, big investments in first-party titles and premium IP are either already here, or coming very soon. To name a few, Sony Japan Studio’s super engaging platformer Astro Bot: Rescue Mission is due out this fall, and Oculus Studio’s and Sanzaru Games’ Marvel Powers United VR (2018) just released yesterday. Oculus has also invested in Twisted Pixel’s upcoming action-adventure game Defector, and Insomniac Games’ upcoming open world adventure Stormland.
VR arcades are also growing at an unprecedented rate, with Bandai Namco expanding its chain of VR Zone Arcades to cities across Japan and the UK, and HTC providing most of the gear and software for China-based arcades thanks to their enterprise-focused game subscription service, Viveport Arcade. New York’s JFK airport just opened a number of Windows VR kiosks too, which are reportedly seeing round-the-clock usage thanks to the high-traffic area and general novelty of trying out a high-end VR headset for the first time.
So while the first generation of consumer VR has been touted as too expensive and too inaccessible, there are some constants here that bear summarizing: the investment is clearly there, the usecase is so unique we’re still exploring its potential both in and outside of the home, and it’s only going to get better, cheaper, more convenient as time goes on. It’s clear VR has had to play the long game from the very start too, so low adoption rates of the first consumer devices is only news to you if you haven’t been following the space.
According to the latest figures from Valve’s Hardware & Software Survey, the Oculus Rift has set a new record for its highest historical market share on Steam, almost certainly driven by a major sale which has also brought the headset its largest ever share increase from one month to the next. While the HTC Vive continues to hold the majority share, the Rift is approaching striking distance.
Steam is the de facto content platform for the HTC Vive though it technically supports the Rift too; plenty of Rifters use both the official Oculus Home platform and Steam to play content which may not be available on the opposing platform.
The latest results show a major gain of 8.1% in the Rift’s share of VR headsets on Steam, bringing the device’s overall share to its highest point ever, reaching 43.8% of all headsets in use on the platform.
The gain was made up mostly by a 7.7% reduction in Vive share and the remaining 0.4% from a reduction in the Rift DK2 development kit. The latter, launched in 2014, still holds 3.9% total share of VR headsets in use on Steam. With Steam as its primary content platform, the Vive naturally holds onto the majority share at 52.3% of all VR headsets on the platform, though at 43.8%, the Rift is approaching striking distance.
Exactly how many Rift users use Steam among the total population of Rift users is unknown, making it largely futile to extrapolate the data in an effort to determine headset market share across all platforms. However, many analyst estimates put the Vive ahead of the Rift in total sales.
The 8.1% gain, the largest ever for the Rift on Steam, was almost certainly driven by the ‘Summer of Rift’ sale which reduced the price of the Rift & Touch controllers from $600 to $400. When the sale ends after September 4th, the non-sale price for a new all-in-one Rift & Touch bundle will be $500. A portion of the gains may have been made up not by new headsets entering the market, but by more Rift users becoming aware of Steam’s compatibility with the Rift. Another contributor could be the expansion of HTC’s Viveport app store and the Viveport subscription service, potentially drawing some Vive users away from Steam.
If you’re at all involved in the VR space, you likely recently saw a flurry of downtrodden headlines describing “slow,” and “modest,” holiday VR headset sales, with some even calling VR “the biggest loser this holiday.”
The impetus of those headlines was a major revision of research firm Superdata’s PlayStation VR sales projections issued on November 29th. The company adjusted their prior PSVR projections from 2.6 million units to 745,000 units and said VR was the “biggest loser” this holiday season. Here’s a sampling of headlines spurred by the news:
The headlines, suggesting that VR ‘missed’ some inherent target is an ingenious way to spin the more accurate headline which is that “SuperData’s PSVR Sales Projections Were Wrong.”
It’s been widely talked about among VR insiders over the last 12 months how overly aggressive many of the early VR industry projections are. Just a few weeks ago I was approached by the head of a well known VR studio who predicted this exact situation—that headlines claiming poor VR headset sales performance were on the way; not because the sales were going to be bad, but because the projections that had been eagerly touted were way off base. That person was absolutely right.
So where can we turn in an effort to get the most accurate data about VR headset sales expectations? To the companies that are making the headsets, of course. While (obviously) none of the major players have given hard figures on launch-to-date sales, many of them have provided some indication of their expectations, or at least useful baselines.
Sony – PlayStation VR
Just days after PSVR’s October launch, Jim Ryan, President of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, spoke to the company’s confidence in early traction of the PSVR headset in an interview with CNBC.
“We know from the data we have from pre-orders that the interest we have is significant,” Ryan said during a TV interview, further saying that PlayStation VR sales will be in the “many hundreds of thousands” as the headset rolls out. “We think to be able to offer PlayStation VR… [at $399 dollars] it’s extremely affordable and we think the takeup is going to be massive,” he said.
Prior to the Rift’s launch in early 2016, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed a question about the impact the headset could have on the company, during Facebook’s Q3 2015 earnings call.
“So we’ve said often that we think that virtual reality and augmented reality could be the next big computing platform,” Zuckerberg said. “But just to put that in perspective and compare it to the development of previous computing platforms, like phones and computers, I think the first smartphones came out in 2003, and in the first year, I think BlackBerry and Palm Treo were the initial smartphones that came out. I think they each sold in the hundreds of thousands of units. So just to kind of give a sense of the time frame that we’re thinking about this and how we expect this to develop, that’s how we’re thinking about that.”
Oculus (who partnered with Samsung on Gear VR) confirmed back in May that the headset had surpassed an impressive 1 million monthly active users, possibly making Gear VR the single widest spread VR platform to date (excluding Google’s inexpensive and mostly incomparable Cardboard headsets). That gives us a definite baseline, and a rough estimate of the total usership, so long as we can accurately figure what portion of the install base is using the headset in a given month. As Samsung abundantly marketed Gear VR as a pre-order giveaway for a number of their smartphones, not all of the headsets out there are directly attributable sales.
While Gear VR’s install base is impressive, its acceleration has likely taken a hit given the trouble Samsung has faced with the global recall of its flagship Note 7 smartphone earlier this year, which was one of the phones that the headset was marketed alongside.
Analysts and investors hoping for a strong HTC comeback pressed the company for details on performance of the Vive’s sales and growth during their Q3 earnings call. Like its competitors in the VR space, the company has declined to give specifics on headset sales this early in the development of the product category, but did respond to questions about a 140,000 unit sales figure that was reported initially by Chinese VR site 87870 and subsequently picked up by many others.
“Right, so I think this is a good question because I also read the [reports about the 140,000 unit sales figure]. I actually talked to [HTC Chairwoman] Cher [Wang] on that,” said Chia-Lin Chang, President of Smartphone and Connected Devices at HTC, in response to a question by an analyst at Arete Research.
“I don’t know [how] this 140,000 number came up. Cher comment[ed] on it, and I can confirm to you here that her comments, basically—of course it’s higher than 140,000. It’s much more than that number,” Chang continued. “But I will not be able to give you a number, and I would encourage you guys not to refer that number. That seems to be anchored fully on something that we have no idea where it came from.”
Chang likened the current VR landscape to a “horse-racing land-grab era,” though he did admit, “I’m not sure it’s the right, appropriate description.” Ultimately he called this portion of the company’s business “the beginning of something very fast expanding, exciting era.”
“What I can tell you is, we—as I say, last time, on the last earning call, we were happy [with] the selling condition [of the Vive] as to the last earning call. I’m very happy to report to you that we continue to be happy with the current selling condition in last quarter,” Chang said in the earnings call. “And we’re looking to hopefully a good—I don’t mean to forward looking, but we’re hopefully looking for a good, happy Christmas shopping season for that.”
Google has given its expectations for Daydream a few years further out than the others. Those expectations are, however, extremely ambitious. At the company’s annual Google I/O conference this year, ahead of the launch of Daydream, Google suggested that in a few years, Daydream would have a massive userbase.
“…our intention [for Daydream] is to operate at Android scale, meaning hundreds of millions of users using Daydream devices. And the way we get there is through the typical smartphone evolution: where today’s premium devices—the ones that can run VR experiences—are next year’s mid-range, and the following year’s low end devices,” Brahim Elbouchikhi, Senior Product Manager on the Google VR team, told developers in the audience. “So if you take that evolution, you can see that in a couple years, we will have hundreds of millions of users on Daydream Ready devices that are ready to consume the mobile VR experiences that you all are going to build.”
That’s not to say that projections of this sort are easy to make; the issue is the trust that people put in them, and the media’s willingness to run headlines with the biggest and most exciting number, a problem we addressed back in April when introducing the 2016 Virtual Reality Industry report that we co-authored with Greenlight Insights:
So what’s the problem with projections? Big projections get big headlines. You don’t have to go searching very far or wide to find VR and AR industry projections forecasting market revenue of tens or hundreds of billions in short timeframes, or that massive numbers of VR headsets will ship in no time at all.
These sorts of stories get headlines because they paint a very optimistic picture of an industry that—in all truthfulness—is unproven and still in its earliest stages. At Road to VR, we see such juicy figures flaunted frequently in our direction, and often pass on reporting them.
Everyone in the industry wants to know that VR and AR is going to be wildly successful and that it’s going to happen fast. Investors especially, many of which are looking for maximum return on a minimal timeframe, are emboldened by the opportunity that the big numbers suggest. But great momentum doesn’t a projection make, it’s about what’s actually happening inside the black box of “the industry.”
“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” – popularly attributed to Bill Gates
In general, we’ve found that many of the projections we see are overly aggressive in their early timeline, seemingly trying to one-up each other as time goes on. We think that the VR industry will achieve its greatest potential when actors within are equipped with the most accurate knowledge.
So when you glean insights from our 2016 VR Industry Report that aren’t all roses and sunshine—like that many developers don’t believe VR will begin to approach mainstream adoption for another 2-3 years, or that the industry is still lacking a killer app to drive that adoption—know that we aren’t going for big headlines, we’re going for big accuracy.We’ve applied our experience as the industry’s most senior VR-dedicated publication, combined with Greenlight VR’s trusted data-driven analysis, to create a comprehensive foundation of the virtual reality landscape and a realistic account of how the market will grow, not only in scale, but crucially, in time as well.
In the company’s most recent earnings call, HTC confirmed it’s making a profit on each Vive headset sold, and that the company has sold “much more” than a widely reported 140,000 units.
Following recent financial troubles from the tumbling smartphone portion of the company’s business, HTC points readily to their relatively new VR business as a beacon toward recovery and eventual growth. In accordance with a Q3 investor earnings call, the company reports “continued sales momentum for the HTC Vive systems across
both consumer and enterprise markets.”
“Much More”
Analysts and investors hoping for a strong HTC comeback pressed the company for details on performance of the Vive’s sales and growth during the Q3 earnings call. Like its competitors in the VR space, the company has declined to give specifics on headset sales this early in the development of the product category, but did respond to questions about a 140,000 unit sales figure that was reported initially by Chinese VR site 87870 and subsequently picked up by many others.
HTC’s Chia-lin Chang, President of Smartphone and Connected Devices
“Right, so I think this is a good question because I also read the [reports about the 140,000 unit sales figure]. I actually talked to [HTC Chairwoman] Cher [Wang] on that,” said Chia-Lin Chang, President of Smartphone and Connected Devices at HTC, in response to a question by an analyst at Arete Research.
“I don’t know [how] this 140,000 number came up. Cher comment[ed] on it, and I can confirm to you here that her comments, basically—of course it’s higher than 140,000. It’s much more than that number,” Chang continued. “But I will not be able to give you a number, and I would encourage you guys not to refer that number. That seems to be anchored fully on something that we have no idea where it came from.”
The seemingly awkward response may be explained by the company wanting to assure investors that sales are better than the reported figure while not wanting to disclose the actual figure. Chang explains why:
“You can see that—from HTC perspective we’re also interested in knowing [competitors sales figures], just vice versa in the other people’s shoes they want to understand HTC. That’s why I would never disclose [the exact figure], because this is the best protection of HTC interests, shareholders, in the long term,” he said.
Previously we had correlated SteamSpy ownership data for bundled Vive games as an indicator of the HTC Vive install base, but—depending upon exactly how much Chang means when he says “much more than that number,”—the method may be flawed. Presently Tilt Brush data would be the best indicator for that method, as it’s the only game that’s been bundled with the Vive since launch; its current ownership figures would suggest a Vive install base of 143,000 (± 10,030) units, but this may not account for enterprise sales of the Vive business edition, and would exclude some number of Vive units unless the Tilt Brush bundle applies to every region where the Vive is sold (which at this time is not clear).
“What I can tell you is, we—as I say, last time, on the last earning call, we were happy [with] the selling condition [of the Vive] as to the last earning call. I’m very happy to report to you that we continue to be happy with the current selling condition in last quarter,” Chang said in the earnings call. “And we’re looking to hopefully a good—I don’t mean to forward looking, but we’re hopefully looking for a good, happy Christmas shopping season for that.”
Chang likened the current VR landscape to a “horse-racing land-grab era,” though he did admit, “I’m not sure it’s the right, appropriate description.” Ultimately he called this portion of the company’s business “the beginning of something very fast expanding, exciting era.”
Sold for Profit
Chang also confirmed another interesting detail, the company does “sell per-unit Vive at a profit.”
There’s actually quite a bit of hardware in the Vive box.
While it might seem obvious that an $800 product would be profitable, the notion of profit doesn’t quite jive with past statements from Oculus who said that their $600 Rift headset was being sold at-cost (no profit). Both headsets have a similar set of components and requirements, and when you add on Oculus’ $200 Touch controllers, the systems units are identically priced.
Without more details—like what exactly the company tallies as contributing to the cost of each headset—it’s tough to say for sure, but there’s a few ways to attempt read this. First is that HTC may simply have a more efficient operation when it comes to producing and selling the Vive—which the company is said to manufacture itself—compared to Oculus. Another possibility is that the per-unit sales may not have been profitable to start, but eventually achieved profitability as the requisite processes improved. Oculus too, may no longer be selling at-cost, or may not ever have been if the cost definition is applied consistently between both company’s operations.
Of course the question remains then for consumers, exactly how much profit are we talking about? $800 is a hefty price to pay, especially for products still in the early-adopter phase, and there’s no doubt that VR needs to get cheaper to spread widely.
Regarding the question of mainstream pricing, investors too want to know what the price trajectory looks like for the Vive going forward. Naturally, that’s not something HTC was ready to give much detail on, but Chang shared, “So we do think we have a good pipeline [for reducing consumer price point in the future]. This is a long-term game for HTC.”
