Sony today revealed its latest PlayStation VR sales milestone of 4.2 million units. The company says this figure represents headsets ‘sold through’ to consumers, as opposed to total outstanding units that might still be in the hands of distributors. The announcement shows that PSVR sales may even be accelerating.

Despite being on the market now for nearly two and a half years, PlayStation VR sales appear to be going strong, and may even be accelerating since the company’s last official milestone. Sony announced today that it has reached 4.2 million PSVR units sold as of March 3rd, 2019. And while the company’s last few milestones had painted a picture of steady sales, the most recent shows an uptick.

Data courtesy Sony, chart by Road to VR

From the 2 million (12/17) to 3 million (8/18) unit milestones the company had sold an average of 120,500 headsets per month. From the 3 million (8/18) unit milestone to the most recent 4.2 million unit milestone (3/19), the company sold an average 185,000 units per month. Of course, the period between the last two milestones covers the holiday shopping season and is therefore expected to have a higher number of sales per month, so we’ll need to wait until the next milestone to see if the apparent uptick sticks.

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With the headset essentially the same as the one that launched at the end of 2016, continued sales have almost certainly driven by strong content, price reductions, and a focused retail effort around the holiday season.

Image courtesy PlayStation

Sony brought not only a string of quality content to the headset in the last year—like Firewall Zero Hour, Astro Bot Rescue Mission, and Beat Saber—but also aggressively bundled much of that content with big discounts for the holiday sales season; here’s a look at the company’s 2018 holiday sales bundle lineup:

  • Borderlands 2 VR + Beat Saber Bundle – $250 [normally $350]
    • Includes PS Move controllers
  • CREED: Rise to Glory + SUPERHOT VR Bundle – $250 [normally $350]
    • Includes PS Move controllers
  • ASTRO BOT Rescue Mission + Moss Bundle – $200 [normally $300]

And Sony’s push for more quality PSVR content doesn’t seem to be waning. The company today made announcements surrounding a slew of new content heading to the headset, along with the announcement of No Man’s Sky getting full VR support, an Iron Man VR game in development, and the release date of Blood & Truth, one of the most anticipated titles coming from one of PlayStation’s first-party studios.

Image courtesy PlayStation

As for PlayStation VR 2? Sony has been totally silent. Still, the fact that the company is continuing to emphasize its PSVR content lineup and is giving regular updates on sales milestones suggests they’re happy with the headset’s performance and having some long term R&D ongoing for their VR platform.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Brian Burgess

    This is excellent for the future of VR. The Quest will help in that regard too. And we have Nintendo who will help foster future VR enthusiasts with Labo Kit VR. This year is looking like the turning point for VR.

    Oh, and despite the controversy surrounding Oculus Rift S right now, the Rift platform is selling pretty well on the PC side of things. Good times ahead.

    • Lucidfeuer

      I like laughing at comments like yours that are so empty and vapid like you were exacting some instagram role.

      • Downvote King

        Jeeeeeeeeez that’s harsh bud

      • Brian Burgess

        Not a fan of the Rift S, I guess. Lol

        I laugh at the irony of your reply. What exactly are you bringing to the conversation beyond your scathing misanthropy? I like sharing my enthusiasm. Apparently you like sharing your miserly mindset with others. Are you this rude with people in person, or does the anonymity of the internet encourage you to go out of your way to be an asshole?

        • Lucidfeuer

          My miserly mindset brings way more to the world, including that of VR, than you hypocrite fairy “enthusiasm” which fortunately less and less people can stand.

          Also don’t take it personally, I’m not judging you but this completely mindless artificial bullshit spreading that was such a stretch from reality that I didn’t even have the motivation to reply “NO, the Quest will not help in the same regards has PSVR sales, NO, Nintendo Lab will not “help foster” shit, No, Oculus has absolutely no indicator that it’s selling well on PC especially since it’s ban on the biggest market that is China, so NO there’s absolutely no indicator nor reasons why this year is “turning point of VR”.

          But maybe you could be a great PR with such bland, vapid and completely untrue statements.

          • Brian Burgess

            It’s so funny that you claim to bring more to the table, and yet all you present are negative statements without any accompanying argument for any of them. If you lack the motivation, then simply don’t reply, rather than being a hypocritical, pseudo intellectual who is hung up that VR isn’t developing the way he wants it too.

      • Hivemind9000

        Go back to 4chan you salty douchebag

      • Sven Viking

        Not quite as pointless as yours at least.

  • Arcticu Kitsu

    Looking good for VR. It started showing signs of being awesome in 2017 (thanks to VRchat) with it just getting better and better with each month. It’s thanks to Sony for constantly pushing that they have a solid foundation, something Bandai Namco should tackle with Gundam VR, but they’re being weird with that. Overall though, for those jumping into VR are getting rewarded highly while those making excuses the “population is small”, or “funding issues” are being shown otherwise.

    Awesome stuff for PSVR being a good noticable brunt for VR side influencing people to even upscale up into Oculus Rift & Vive side of things.

    There’s also controversy over Rift S, and that still baffles me though. It’s fine, even with the cons it has, yet still fine. Whatever allows people to be immersed. If it does its job it is fine.

    I’m also amused by Nintendo’s take on VR. It’s “something” hopefully having the same effect as PSVR to nudge people into PC VR side of things.

    But yeah…… Bandai-Namco, you’re honestly failing us here. Do SOMETHING…. Something with Gundam VR…..

  • impurekind

    Good stuff.

  • daveinpublic

    I feel like this is the first piece of good news for VR sales in a while. Maybe the industry will see this and see VR can be profitable. At 4 million, that’s mass market, right? You can bet that studios will start taking another look at VR. Maybe Xbox will take it seriously now, too. Didn’t they say that they have a Halo experience in the works? Maybe that’s for an upcoming XBox VR headset.

    • MosBen

      There’s no good metric for when something has made enough sales to be “mainstream”, but the Wii U sold about 13.5 million units and was considered a pretty significant bomb. But while a big user base is great, what’s really important to developers is how many games are being sold. If just about every major game released on PSVR is selling a million units, that’s pretty good, particularly since a lot of the games released for VR have had relatively small budgets and smaller teams, like Beat Saber.

      • Fourfoldroot

        The thing about VR users, they are enthusiasts. Playing on something truly next gen (unlike the latest consoles). The average number of games bought is much higher than the general PS4 owners. I can’t link unfortunately.

        • Multiplataformgamerz

          can’t link = I’m making this up

  • Andrew McEvoy

    Im not psvr owner and barely a console owner so no ps bias from me, but have to say well played Sony you are really helping VR out overall. Very glad that you are on the team.

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    • mirak

      No they do not with exclusives and such

      • Andrew McEvoy

        Agreed Im still bitter about res evil 5, but looking at the bigger picture they are still helping not hindering.

        • care package

          I think you mean 7, and ya I’m a bit bitter too. I can’t tell if Sony’s laughing to the bank or if Capcom is for signing an exclusivity deal when they had no plans to make it anywhere else anyway. My only guess is they didn’t want to take the extra time to develop for motion controls, but I would have been just fine with using a controller still.

          • Andrew McEvoy

            Yes quite right, I meant ResEvil 7. I wonder how much Capcom got for that deal, and would it have been dwarfed by how much they could have made bringing it to PC. I would have bought it in a heartbeat, controller or not.

  • MosBen

    It seems pretty likely that Sony is going to start talking about a Playstation 5 in earnest either this year or next year. I would imagine that the launch of a significantly more powerful console will come with an update to their VR offerings. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of changes they’ll make for a second generation. New controllers seem inevitable, and I would imagine that they’ll go with inside-out tracking. The resolution on the PSVR isn’t terrible compared to its contemporaries, but a boost there seems inevitable. Eye tracking with foveated rendering seems like a good feature, since the PS5 will be a fixed platform and will need to squeeze every ounce of performance that it can out of the hardware. A wider FOV would be nice.

    • MosBen

      I’d really like Sony to push local VR multiplayer for their second generation. Solo VR is great, but it’d be cool to be able to share with someone instead of being isolated.

  • Lucidfeuer

    I hope they will upgrade it this year, because 2022 for the PS5 will be a bit a late. Otherwise, it’s all about price, platform and experience which is vastly different to that of PC.

  • impurekind

    I’m thinking the release of No Man’s Sky’s full VR support is gonna help PSVR see a big uptake in sales over the next few months.

    • VRob

      Tack on that they may be doing an untethered headset and then they are really on to something.

  • Tesla

    Microsoft, where are you? You see, VR sells very well.

    • Ovv ner

      ..

  • DarkAvry

    Cant wait for PS5 and PSVR2, with proper gamepads [I have a feeling it will be inside out tracking like most doing now], higher resolution RGB OLED [even the current one is unbeatable, yeah its just 1080p but its full RGB OLED 120hz], regualr lenses [no frensel god-ray poop] and sub 500$ price

  • hugorune

    No Fortnite VR.
    No World War Toons VR.
    No Battlefield x VR.
    No Battlefieldheroes VR.
    Not even one battle royale shooter for PSVR.

    • VR4EVER

      Who needs that crap in VR? Move on!

    • Ovv ner

      Rec room have battle royal, so does honor and duty dday, the fact they are poor is another topic.

  • Hivemind9000

    It’s a pity Microsoft isn’t pushing VR on the console, as it would be great for there to be some competitive pressure on Sony to bring out the PS5/PSVR2.

    Either way, this is good news for the VR industry.

  • Sven Viking

    “As for PlayStation VR 2? Sony has been totally silent.”

    There’s no way they’ll announce that before PS5 imho.