According to a study published by Superdata, virtual reality will multiply the number of current users by 10 by the end of 2016. It will all start with the first wave of commercial HMDs that will arrive this year.
In 2014, a total of 1.3 million HMDs were sold, and 2.6 billion dollars were invested in virtual and augmented reality companies. There are currently around 200 developers working on virtual reality projects and about 15 different VR HMDs in different states of completion. In the middle of this year the first wave of commercial devices for PC will arrive, Razer’s OSVR being one of them, while the first device for consoles will leave in the middle or end of 2016, as predicted.
Virtual reality will be commercially viable in 2016, where 46% of users will be PC, 28% consoles and the remaining 26% mobile. Video games will be the engine of virtual reality, with 76% of the total developed content (37% for PC, 32% for mobile and 7% for consoles), driven these mostly by independent titles since the big AAA productions will take longer to arrive because they will wait for the market to be viable with a greater number of users.
Virtual reality has a long way to go to offer photo-realistic video content, as resolutions up to 8000p will be required. Content will be limited to promotions, live events and animated shorts for at least the next 5 years. The content for children, however, being less complex, and having fewer technical limitations, will have great potential and proof of this is the past announcement of Google and Mattel.
In addition and as we usually say in Real or Virtual, virtual reality is going to change everything and not just the world of video games. Other sectors such as medicine, education or design also have a multitude of possible uses for VR, allowing investment in them to be beneficial for game developers as well.
So far all the highlights of the report. Without a doubt, everything indicates that this time virtual reality has come to stay and all thanks to the work of a young man who bet on it and launched the Kickstarter that made everyone believe in this great dream again. What do you think, do you think that everything will be fulfilled?
