The Chinese variant of the Oculus Go, sold by Xiaomi as the ‘Mi VR Standalone’, appears to be seeing strong launch demand, with the headset quickly selling out, in some cases within just minutes.
XR intelligence firm Greenlight Insights estimates that 30,000 Mi VR Standalone headsets were sold in the headsets first day, and apparently constrained by stock availability; the headset sold out completely at the official Xiaomi site in just three minutes, Greenlight notes, and the 32GB version sold out at JD.com, one of China’s largest online retailers, in the first few hours of sale.
What’s more, more than 50,000 users have signed up on the official Mi VR Standalone product page to be notified when the headset’s stock replenishes (which requires creating an account). At the time of writing, the breakdown of stock notifications is 33,300 for the 32GB version and 24,000 for the 64GB version. Both capacities of the headset remain sold out at Xiaomi and JD.com.
The Mi VR Standalone is priced at ¥1,500 ($235) and ¥1,800 ($280) for the 32GB and 64GB versions respectively, a slight increase over Oculus Go’s $200/$250 price tag in the US, which can be accounted for by the Chinese value added tax of 17%. The headset runs Xiaomi’s own VR platform, rather than Oculus’.
Greenlight notes that Xiaomi is the largest Chinese consumer brand to launch a standalone VR headset to date, and that the Eastern market is generally more familiar with standalone VR headsets than elsewhere, with a range of standalone headsets available to consumers in the last few years.
Disclosure: Road to VR co-publishes the VR Industry Report with Greenlight Insights.
