Sony Is Coming but with More Stutter than Swagger
Based on a recent article on Road to VR, Sony reduced its P25 Sales forecast for 2022, and the PSVR 2 delayed to 2023:
https://www.roadtovr.com/report-psvr-2-rumored-release-early-2023-missing-holiday-season/Estimated sales through EOY will be around 30M units. Assuming an additional 15M units for 2023 we can estimate PSVR 2 capture at a high, mid, low sales volumes.
45M PS5 Sales EOY 2023 - PSVR2 Sales expectation assuming no production delays:
Low (5%) 2.25M
Mid (10%) 4.5M
High (20%) 9M
That said, given their current ability to produce consoles -- which is a strange failure on their part to predict Semicon constraints, strange since they are famously building a commercial EV -- it's unlikely Sony can produce sufficient numbers of units. A revised number accounting for production delays could significantly lower their sales potential for PSVR2 through 2023:
Low (1%) 450K
Mid (2.5%) 1.17M
High (5%) 2.25M
Either way, this places PSVR2 squarely in the top seat along with Meta's HMDs and pits the companies head-to-head for dominance in the VR market moving forward. However, considering the laggard pace of console development versus the break-neck speed of Meta's device rollout (new ware every two years), Sony's got its work cut out for it. PSVR2 will no doubt make a dent in Meta's share of the HMD market (currently 70% or thereabout), but a better question perhaps is can Sony pivot to an independent "Metaverse Console" that can match the pace of innovation? Naturally, they have the capacity to do so as demonstrated by their mobile phones division, but whether or not they can transfer that capacity to this new market remains unclear and, frankly speaking, doubtful.
Horizon Worlds on a Healthy Path
Meta’s “social VR platform” Horizon Worlds hit the news over the weekend announcing 300k (10X growth) after 90days.
This is a good accomplishment… some context for why that is. On mobile the gold standard was (is?) 1M MAU after 90days. That’s a much lower penetration considering anyone with a pair of pants has a smartphone.
For perspective, assuming 70% of activations are in the USA and Canada (the only market where Horizon Worlds is publicly available), and the rumor 10M units sold is accurate, then Worlds has around 5% penetration to the TAM. Not bad… let’s see what happens.
Here is the Verge Article reporting on this:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/17/22939297/meta-social-vr-platform-horizon-300000-users
A bigger question is how will this platform compete with RecRoom or VR Chat.
In particular, here is an article that discusses RecRoom as a benchmark. It has 1M MAU (available worldwide and on Steam) and supposedly “millions more” on non-VR platforms incl. Xbox.
Will Horizon Worlds become a cross-platform game? I think so, and - assuming it is fun and interesting- this will drive the MAU much higher as it expands the TAM to include mobile and online users.
Beat Saber Queen - 2021
Beat Saber Queen in 2021 with AfreecaTV was a major milestone in building the VR Gaming ecosystem in Korea. We started that journey at the beginning of the year, and finally pulled it off with the help of our friends and Meta, Beat Games, Onestore, and of course our production partners AfreecaTV.
This was the first program for Beat Saber in the world. I hope we can produce this program properly in 2022, let's see how it goes! Who knows, this could be the next "Masked Singer"? (For those who don't know it's a Korean program that was licensed to a US producer.)
Check it out below on Koon's YT channel, skip to around 20min to see me play "Reason for Living" on Expert Plus.
You can also check out the full program AfreecaTV:
https://vod.afreecatv.com/PLAYER/STATION/77408486?change_second=741.