Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation
What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
Nintendo has reportedly sold more than 1.5 million Switch systems after the console launched in early March. Nearly every buyer also purchased a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
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Nintendo Of America's president confirmed that the Nintendo Switch console launch was the company's biggest ever in North America, beating previous sales records established by its Wii console.
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In an interview with the New York Times, President and Global CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment Andrew House revealed official sales numbers for the PlayStation VR. Sales have been so good that it surprised the company.
The post Sony’s PlayStation VR outselling Facebook’s Oculus Rift, Valve’s HTC Vive appeared first on Digital Trends.
Sony still isn’t releasing sales figures for PlayStation VR (PSVR) yet, but it does insist that it’s performing as expected.
The Japanese electronics company today published its financial report for fiscal Q3 and, while profits are down year-on-year for the overall company, it’s good news from the PlayStation division. A total of 9.7 million PlayStration 4 consoles were sold during the quarter, stretching from October to December 2016, and sales were up year-on-year. The company attributed not only the reduction in the price of the PS4 to this success but also the launch of PlayStation VR in October. No statistics were revealed for the headset but Sony did reiterate that “PS VR is selling in-line with expectations.”
Just what those expectations are remains a mystery for now.
Still, PSVR fans will be pleased to here the headset is measuring up to Sony’s estimations at the very least. For many, the system’s $399 price point, paired with the PS4, makes it a much more affordable option than the $599 Oculus Rift or $799 HTC Vive, both of which require expensive PCs to operate. Still, with VR yet to reach its mainstream potential and so many issues left with the hardware at this early stage, it’s impossible to tell just how big the early market is for the device.
At the very least, we know PlayStation VR has sold at least around 98,617 units; that’s the current number of people that have registered to say they’re using the device to play Capcom’s Resident Evil 7 [Review: 9/10], which launched with optional PSVR support last month. It’s likely that the real number far exceeds this, though.
Sony is looking to boost PSVR sales this month with the reintroduction of its $499 launch bundle for the device, including everything you need to get started, and a new bundle that’s exclusive to GameStop and EB Games. Releases like Farpoint and Ace Combat 7 will also look to bolster the install base as the year goes on, though we’re hoping for a big update on what’s next for the device at either GDC or E3 in the coming weeks and months.
A new report from Super Data offers new estimates for the market size of virtual reality in 2016, suggesting 6.3 million VR headsets were shipped in the whole of 2016.
Last year saw the launch of several high-end VR headsets complemented by new mobile offerings. The report, titled “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: 2016 Mobile and VR Games Year in Review,” is a compilation of information Super Data and Unity Technologies, though we clarified with Unity that they did not contribute to the estimates for VR headset data in the report.
The report estimates 4.5 million Gear VRs were sold through last year. Clocking in at number two on the list is the PlayStation VR with sales “approaching a million” by the end of 2016. This leaves Oculus, Google and HTC to split about a million units. According to this report, HTC’s Vive edged out Facebook’s Rift selling “more than 400K at its $800 price point.”
The report also notes “Oculus has shown a strong interest in gaming and social applications so consumer penetration will be more important to the Rift. Meanwhile, HTC Vive is becoming the device of choice for enterprise developers…”
We won’t know official numbers until manufacturers themselves start releasing more solid information. Samsung is the only company to have released actual numbers, saying 5 million Gear VR headsets have been sold so far. Last November, before the figure was released by Samsung, Super Data estimated the company would sell far fewer headsets in 2016. This gap between Samsung’s and Super Data’s numbers highlights how different the figures in this report could be from the actual sales numbers. Here’s how Super Data says it arrives at its numbers:
“Every month we collect spending data on millions of unique online gamers directly from publishers and developers, totaling 50+ publishers and 450+ game titles. We combine the digital point-of-sale data with quality consumer insights to speak to the ‘why’ of the market. We clean, aggregate and analyze these data to establish market benchmarks and models for all segments of digital games and interactive media. Our research covers everything from worldwide genre benchmarks to title-level KPIs, country-level deep dives and brand equity. The mobile and VR studies were based on the following: 49 million unique transactions from 15 million unique gamers between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2016, a survey of 1,000 U.S. mobile gamers from July 2016, data collected from partners in the VR Data Network.”
Tagged with: numbers, PS VR, rift, sales, shipped, sold, super data, unity, Vive
Arizona Sunshine [Review: 8.5/10] is getting an update that supports full locomotion. That part we knew, but what we didn’t know was how much money the game made so far.
Developers Vertigo Games and Jaywalkers Interactive today said their VR zombie shooter made $1.4 million in sales during its first month of release on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, from Dec. 6 to Jan. 5. In a prepared statement, Vertigo Games’ Managing Director, Richard Stitselaar said “from what we can tell, it may be the fastest selling non-bundled PC VR title to date.” The game usually sells for around $40 and we confirmed with Vertigo the $1.4 million figure that was shared is the amount sold before a cut taken by Valve’s Steam or Facebook’s Oculus store.
It is well-deserved; Arizone Sunshine was named UploadVR’s 2016 Game of the Year shortly after its launch. The first-person shooter uses position tracked controls to offer an intense zombie massacre in which the player treks across the Arizona desert.
Arizone Sunshine isn’t the only VR game to see success over the past year. Earlier this month we reported that Owlchemy Labs had sold $3 million with its Job Simulator since launch in April 2016. Furthermore, The Gallery developer Cloudhead Games and Raw Data developer Survios have both independently confirmed to UploadVR that they cleared $1 million in sales for their respective titles.
Along with the sales milestone, Vertigo took the opportunity to formally release the full locomotion update, arriving today. That means players will be able to navigate the game’s world using controls similar to a normal first-person shooter game, which fans had requested as an alternative to the teleportation system the title already uses.
We’re expecting the game to arrive on PlayStation VR later this year, though no final date has been set.
Tagged with: arizona sunshine, sales, Vertigo Games