PSVR To Be Priced At $400-600, To Sell 1.9M In 2016 According To Market Research

Many expected Sony to announce critical PSVR details such as pricing and release date at CES 2016, but that didn’t happen. However, market research companies have already analyzed the growing virtual reality market and recently started sharing their results.

For example, according to SuperData Research PSVR should be priced between $400 and $600; given today’s shocking announcement of the Oculus Rift price ($599), this doesn’t seem far fetched at all, and Sony did hint that the device would be priced like a console. The company also conducted customer surveys and according to their results, PSVR will sell approximately 1.9 million units by 2016 with 5% of the market share.

This would be the smallest market share, with PC VR (counting both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive) estimated at 17% or 6.6 million units. By far the largest share would be the mobile one, though, mainly because of the low entry barrier (GearVR only costs $100 and Google Cardboard even less).

There’s more interesting data from the report, anyway. For example, 829 VR games are estimated to be in development with indie studios more eager to jump on the virtual reality boat while AAA companies are somewhat reluctant. Moreover, US gamers’ interest in VR games has been ranked by action, action/adventure, adventure, FPS and RPG in this order.

According to another slide, console gamers would also be more likely to spend over $400 on VR than PC users (19% against 10%). Hardcore gamers are also deemed willing to spend more than casual gamers ($304 against $236), though that’s hardly a surprise.

In case you’re curious about the metodology used by SuperData Research in this analysis, here’s their explanation:

Market estimates in this report were compiled based on transaction-level data collected by SuperData Research from a consortium of providers, including developers, publishers and payment service providers, totaling 48 million unique digital gamers. This information was complemented by a variety of publicly available sources as well as interviews conducted by SuperData’s analysts with key figures in the Virtual and Augmented Reality industry.
Player behavior and sentiment data was assessed using a survey of 557 qualified respondents in the period of November and December, 2015.
This panel profile includes video game users who are 13+ years old, played a video game at least once within a month of taking the survey, expressed at least some interest in Virtual Reality, and live in the United States.