Eric Ravenscraft
When we talk about VR headsets, we namedrop Oculus and HTC’s Vive a lot. However, if we had to bet on which VR headset is inside any given household, statistically Sony’s PSVR is the best bet.
Today, Sony announced that the company has sold 3 million PSVR units, which isn’t exactly a huge number—it’s only around 3.6% of the 82+ million people with a PS4—but it’s also a massive lead on the rest of the consumer VR market. According to estimates by Statista (which may vary from official sales numbers), Sony is outselling the outselling its closest competitor, Oculus, by a factor of 2:1 in 2018. And that’s after the release of the much more affordable Oculus Go.
The disparity shouldn’t be surprising, of course. Sony’s headset only requires that you own a PS4 to use it—any PS4 will do, you don’t even need the PS4 Pro—instead of an expensive gaming rig like the higher end Oculus and Vive headsets do. The company also has around 340 games available for the PSVR, including VR versions of titles like Skyrim, Resident Evil 7, and Doom. That’s a healthy library, even if it doesn’t have every popular VR game around.
Of course, none of this is to say that Sony’s VR headset is necessarily the best one around—competitors often have better motion tracking or higher quality displays—or even the cheapest one you can get—Google will sell you a $100 headset that uses your phone—but it’s becoming increasingly clear that if you want to play games in VR and don’t want to devote a huge chunk of your disposable income towards it, then Sony is increasingly the way to go.
