What They Say
IBC365 carries some information from Omdia on the state of VR with a report that consumers will have bought 6.4 million headsets during 2020 worth up to $1 billion. While that sounds positive, it represents household penetration of just 1.2% across the 32 countries tracked. Sales this year has been limited by manufacturing challenges in the first half of 2020 due to Covid-19, while the November launch of next gen Xbox and PlayStation games consoles has diverted gamer’s attention and budgets.
By 2025, 45m headsets will be actively used by consumers, who will spend $4bn on VR games and other media. This will translate into a 3% household penetration of headsets by 2025, highlighting the long road ahead for the mass adoption of VR. Jijiashvili estimates that 1.2m units of Quest devices will be sold in 2020, growing to 5.6m units in 2025.
A classic chicken and egg situation is holding the market back. Game makers do not want to invest heavily in VR because of the small number of households with headsets. Consumers, meanwhile, are holding off buying headsets because of the lack of compelling content.
Jijiashvili reckons that games will account for 90% of total spend on VR content in 2025.
What We Think
This is a longer article with more on content and Facebook. It’s worth a read if those are topics of interest. (BR)
