4 ms·

A million sold is a lot for a $300 peripheral.

SeanBoocock 10y ago
$400 actually. Also most(?) people probably had to buy the $500 bundle as PSVR requires a Sony Playstation camera to function and many games utilize the bundled Move controllers as input devices.
haydenlee 10y ago
A million sold is a lot for a $300 gen 1 peripheral without a proven content lineup.
MegaButts 10y ago
It's enough to make me think it could go either way, but I still think VR will grow slowly over a period of several years before finding its niche in the market. To put things in perspective, Microsoft sold tens of millions of Kinect devices before abandoning it - within the first 60 days they had sold 8 million. http://www.businessinsider.com/why-microsoft-xbox-kinect-didnt-take-off-2015-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-microsoft-xbox-kinect-did...
kabdib 10y ago
Sheer quantity shipped is not a guarantee that a platform will be viable. The Kinect sold ten or twelve million in the first couple of months. (That may have been the number manufactured, but it still sold in the many-millions on launch). That didn't help it succeed. There are a bunch of reasons why it didn't, and why it was eventually all but deprecated from the Xbox One. I believe that user interaction design driven by management-imposed ideology, rather than user testing, was a big factor.
- dageshi 10y ago
  As you say, Kinect was dumb for a whole host of reasons, PSVR on the otherhand is broadly compatible with Oculus and Vive in the sense that the games made for one can be adapted to the other that means the potential market isn't just limited to PSVR only. I think that fact moves it firmly out of kinect territory. I also agree and said at the time, adding $100+ to the price of the xbox one for a peripheral which most people wouldn't use was incredibly fucking dumb.
  - MegaButts 10y ago
    > PSVR on the otherhand is broadly compatible with Oculus and Vive in the sense that the games made for one can be adapted to the other This is actually one of the big problems in developing content for VR, because it's not true. There are different levels of immersion in VR, and you cannot take a game that is full immersion which includes 360 roomscale tracking with hands, to the most limited VR which is front facing tracking without hands. One is being able to walk around and touch things with your hand, the other is sitting in a chair and not being to touch things. Yes, you can use the most basic immersion on any VR system, but my understanding is most people don't want to bother with it because it's boring. One thing the Vive did correctly in my opinion is offering the highest immersion to every buyer - there were no optional wands, they were included (whereas you have to buy them separately for the Rift). 360 tracking is out of the box, whereas with the Rift you need to buy a 3rd sensor for that to work (and they're still having so many problems Facebook has even admitted it's not working properly). The PSVR does not support 360 tracking at all right now, it's intended as a sit down experience. I see a lot of potential in VR, but I'd say it's 2 generations away from becoming "mainstream" in the sense that there is an active community for it and it's profitable, but it's always going to be a subset of the gaming market (talking solely about VR for gaming, the focus with Facebook is clearly to focus on mobile). Right now it's way too expensive, the resolution is bad, it requires high end video cards to just barely eke out 90 fps when you want 120 fps, and most importantly there is a serious lack of content. Like another commenter said, VR right now is in the Palm Pilot stages. It's cool and there are early adopters, but it has a long way to go before we're in the iPhone era.
    - iamdave 10y ago
      This is actually one of the big problems in developing content for VR, because it's not true. What isn't true? There are absolutely games on the market that have been ported between PSVR, Occulus and Vive platforms.
      - MegaButts 10y ago
        If you make a game that's designed around 360 tracking and utilizing your hands, you can port it to the Rift but only a small fraction of the users would have the necessary hardware and setup for it to work, and you fundamentally could not port it to the PSVR. Right now there are so few VR games that everybody is mostly making tech demos, and it's a bit of a crapshoot how well they work on each piece of hardware as a lot of stuff gets figured out. As more developers commit to the Vive (which polls show is the case) it seems likely that the full experience games won't be ported at all. I foresee a lot of forks within VR gaming, which is bad considering it's seeing much slower growth than many had hoped. What I suspect will happen is the Vive will dominate for PC gaming (which I suspect will be a niche market), Oculus will dominate mobile (I think this will take 5-10 years and they will be heavily competing with Apple who is leapfrogging VR entirely for AR which I think will be a far bigger market and the true next computing platform), and the PSVR will slowly fade into oblivion the same way that nobody uses a Kinect anymore.

$400 actually. Also most(?) people probably had to buy the $500 bundle as PSVR requires a Sony Playstation camera to function and many games utilize the bundled Move controllers as input devices.

haydenlee 10y ago

A million sold is a lot for a $300 gen 1 peripheral without a proven content lineup.

MegaButts 10y ago

It's enough to make me think it could go either way, but I still think VR will grow slowly over a period of several years before finding its niche in the market. To put things in perspective, Microsoft sold tens of millions of Kinect devices before abandoning it - within the first 60 days they had sold 8 million. http://www.businessinsider.com/why-microsoft-xbox-kinect-didnt-take-off-2015-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-microsoft-xbox-kinect-did...

kabdib 10y ago

Sheer quantity shipped is not a guarantee that a platform will be viable. The Kinect sold ten or twelve million in the first couple of months. (That may have been the number manufactured, but it still sold in the many-millions on launch). That didn't help it succeed. There are a bunch of reasons why it didn't, and why it was eventually all but deprecated from the Xbox One. I believe that user interaction design driven by management-imposed ideology, rather than user testing, was a big factor.

dageshi 10y ago
As you say, Kinect was dumb for a whole host of reasons, PSVR on the otherhand is broadly compatible with Oculus and Vive in the sense that the games made for one can be adapted to the other that means the potential market isn't just limited to PSVR only. I think that fact moves it firmly out of kinect territory. I also agree and said at the time, adding $100+ to the price of the xbox one for a peripheral which most people wouldn't use was incredibly fucking dumb.
- MegaButts 10y ago
  > PSVR on the otherhand is broadly compatible with Oculus and Vive in the sense that the games made for one can be adapted to the other This is actually one of the big problems in developing content for VR, because it's not true. There are different levels of immersion in VR, and you cannot take a game that is full immersion which includes 360 roomscale tracking with hands, to the most limited VR which is front facing tracking without hands. One is being able to walk around and touch things with your hand, the other is sitting in a chair and not being to touch things. Yes, you can use the most basic immersion on any VR system, but my understanding is most people don't want to bother with it because it's boring. One thing the Vive did correctly in my opinion is offering the highest immersion to every buyer - there were no optional wands, they were included (whereas you have to buy them separately for the Rift). 360 tracking is out of the box, whereas with the Rift you need to buy a 3rd sensor for that to work (and they're still having so many problems Facebook has even admitted it's not working properly). The PSVR does not support 360 tracking at all right now, it's intended as a sit down experience. I see a lot of potential in VR, but I'd say it's 2 generations away from becoming "mainstream" in the sense that there is an active community for it and it's profitable, but it's always going to be a subset of the gaming market (talking solely about VR for gaming, the focus with Facebook is clearly to focus on mobile). Right now it's way too expensive, the resolution is bad, it requires high end video cards to just barely eke out 90 fps when you want 120 fps, and most importantly there is a serious lack of content. Like another commenter said, VR right now is in the Palm Pilot stages. It's cool and there are early adopters, but it has a long way to go before we're in the iPhone era.
  - iamdave 10y ago
    This is actually one of the big problems in developing content for VR, because it's not true. What isn't true? There are absolutely games on the market that have been ported between PSVR, Occulus and Vive platforms.
    - MegaButts 10y ago
      If you make a game that's designed around 360 tracking and utilizing your hands, you can port it to the Rift but only a small fraction of the users would have the necessary hardware and setup for it to work, and you fundamentally could not port it to the PSVR. Right now there are so few VR games that everybody is mostly making tech demos, and it's a bit of a crapshoot how well they work on each piece of hardware as a lot of stuff gets figured out. As more developers commit to the Vive (which polls show is the case) it seems likely that the full experience games won't be ported at all. I foresee a lot of forks within VR gaming, which is bad considering it's seeing much slower growth than many had hoped. What I suspect will happen is the Vive will dominate for PC gaming (which I suspect will be a niche market), Oculus will dominate mobile (I think this will take 5-10 years and they will be heavily competing with Apple who is leapfrogging VR entirely for AR which I think will be a far bigger market and the true next computing platform), and the PSVR will slowly fade into oblivion the same way that nobody uses a Kinect anymore.