According to official word on the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) website the show is from Tuesday, June 13th until Thursday, June 15th, but that’s not really the case. Electronic Arts (EA) has their press conference on Saturday, June 10th (which is actually tomorrow) and plenty of other press conferences and events happen the days before the show floor itself actually opens. In this way E3 is really a week-long affair and some companies have even started hosting events the week before too. It feels like it starts earlier and earlier every year.
And like usual the company that puts on E3 every year, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA,) has issued their annual “Essential Facts About The Compute and Video Game Industry” report that’s full of demographic information and sales data. It also has a lot of information about this year’s impending E3 as well.
The number that stood out the most to us when reading it is just how prevalent the VR and AR markets appear to be at E3 this year. Reportedly there are 126 exhibitors at this year’s show that are demoing and showing content related to VR or AR, which is a dramatic 138% increase from last year’s comparatively meager 53 exhibitors.
There’s tons of interesting bits of information in the report as well and it’s certainly worth a read. Some of the other relevant highlights for the VR/AR industries are:
- 11% of US households own some kind of VR headset that’s used to play games,
- According to Digi-Capital, the AR/VR market will exceed $108 billion by 2021,
- 74% of PC/console VR headset owners use their device to play single player video games.
Do these numbers surprise you? What are you most excited about seeing shown at E3 next week? Let us know down in the comments below! In the meantime visit our E3 news hub and read our predictions and rundown of everything you need to know about E3 2017. And don’t forget to watch all of the major press conferences right here at UploadVR.
