The coveted race to one million VR headsets was technically won previously since the Samsung Gear VR, a mobile-powered headset that requires a compatible Samsung Galaxy smartphone to work, surpassed it a very long time ago. In fact, earlier this year, they confirmed over five million so they’re pretty far out in front. But in the realm of non-mobile, tethered VR headsets the PlayStation VR (PSVR) is seemingly at the head of the pack.
Earlier this year Sony confirmed it was nearing one million units when it announced 915,000 PSVR headsets sold as of February 19th, 2017, but now, according to The Verge, the company has officially surpassed one million as their total.
“We’ll have freer supply in the marketplace,” Shawn Layden, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, tells The Verge. “We got to a point around Christmas where you would be hard-pressed to find VR anywhere. So we dialed back some of our promotional activity at that time because we didn’t want to be promoting a platform for people to find out they couldn’t get it. I didn’t want to create more unhappy customers.”
It’s a smart approach. Now that headsets are finally getting into the hands of consumers and we’re over a year removed from the initial launches of the Rift and Vive, we can turn our focus towards content. The PSVR had a solid launch lineup and has delivered quality titles in the meantime, such as Farpoint and Resident Evil 7, but it remains to be seen what the rest of 2017 and the first half of 2018 will hold for the flagship VR device. We should hear more about that at E3 2017 next week.
What do you think of the PSVR news? Are you one of the million consumers that have purchased Sony’s headset? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments below!
