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.
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.
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.
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.
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.