Numbers don't lie: VR is in trouble

Remember back in June, when IDC were predicting that VR headset sales were just about to rebound after plunging by thirty-five percent? Well, here's the thing about that... funny story... it's not happening. At all.

As reported by CinemaBlend:

Virtual Reality gaming is in a unique place. The hardware seems to be doing well, but is that well enough to keep developers interested? According to a recent study, the answer to that question might be no. Over the past six months, it appears VR hardware sales have been on the decline.

The folks over at Thinknum recently conducted a study involving the sale of VR hardware on Amazon. It wasn't a super exhaustive study and pretty much stuck straight to the figures, but you can't really argue that those figures aren't on the decline.

The decline is happening across the board, too: sales of PSVR, GearVR, and HTC Vive were all down. Even Oculus Go, which many VR industry advocates were hoping would be a panacea for VR's troubles, a magic-bullet combination of standalone functionality and low price point, is struggling.

Finally, they took a look at the Oculus Go sales rankings, which have been on a decline since May. As one of the folks in the comments points out, there's no mention of the cheaper core Oculus system, which seems like another odd choice. The Go was a top-item on Amazon in May but, two months later, it's barely in the top 100 items. You can make of that what you will, but the study takes it as a clear sign interest in VR gaming is on the decline.

The declines are not subtle, either, as shown by Thinknum's graphs.

CinemaBlend explain the decline very simply: "most folks who want a VR headset likely have them. For the market to grow, more -- and more impressive -- games need to be a focus." The problem with that logic, though, is that the market isn't large enough now to support the development of the more-impressive content that's needed to grow the market. Even if the hardware were to become "even cheaper and less cumbersome to deal with," in the absence of some useful activity that it can actually enable, VR will continue to lack a value proposition.

And in the absence of an actual benefit to plug into the cost/benefit calculation... well, I'm not going to say that it's impossible for VR to still catch on, but I'd still be willing to bet money on VR not becoming a thing anytime soon. Don't expect VR headset sales to surge this year. Or next year. Or, probably, the year after that.