The latest report from Superdata reveals some interesting facts about what the first commercial year of virtual reality was like, placing Gear VR as the best-selling HMD.
Superdata it reveals in its new report that virtual reality managed to enter 1800 million in its first commercial year, leading to a slow adoption by users as it usually happens with any new medium. Despite this, it was openly made known thanks to the caliber of the companies involved such as Facebook, Oculus, HTC, Sony, Samsung and Google that managed to sell a total of 6.3 million devices. Gear VR was the winner in terms of the number of devices sold with 4.5 million, which is a slight difference from Samsung’s official numbers.
PlayStation VR has managed to surpass PC viewers in sales, reaching close to one million units sold. A figure that could have been much higher if there had been no stock problems worldwide, which could indicate that Sony was cautious with the launch of PSVR. On the other hand, HTC Vive, according to these figures, has practically doubled in units sold to the Oculus viewer, becoming the developers’ favorite HMD.
The sale of games accounted for 44% of the virtual reality market, with Job Simulator being one of the best-selling games despite coming as a gift in the initial Vive package. Unity has also provided data to make this report, since according to them, the duration of the games in desktop virtual reality was very similar to those of mobile, users coming back about 40 times a month. These figures are expected to increase throughout 2017.
