Putting Sony’s 4.2 million PSVR sales in context

[Mnementh]

The_Liquid_Laser said:

Mnementh said:

I take issue with the always. True enough, VR isn't big outside a niche group. But it may be possible to change the fate. Look what Apple did to smartphones, the market exploded. Or Nintendo to home consoles. And handhelds. All what is needed is an enticing product with the right pitch to customers. For Switch BOTW was that pitch. Maybe CR can take off with the right game, the VRs BOTW.

Apple took a relatively new technology and they were the first to make it commercially viable (both with smartphones and MP3 players).  Nintendo took an old product that was formerly very successful and revived it (home consoles).  VR is not new and it has never been successful.  VR has been proven to be unsuccessful over and over.  And yet people want to keep trying the same thing and expect different results.

Nope, Apple didn't took new tech. MP3-players were a thing for quite some time before Apple entered the market, in fact I had a Archos Jukebox befoore the ipod released and the brand Rio was already strongly associated with mp3-players when Apple entered the market.

Smartphones also preexisted the iphone. Especially in japan i-mode was a success, leading to a high distribution of smartphone in an era before Apple entered the market.

We could discuss if something has to be successful from the beginning of the introduction of the tech. For instance computers exited for decades before they became a common item. That can happen if either new technology or new marketing/market placement/partnerships makes it more viable for the mass market. That's for instance a reason I think Google Stadia might be successful, it looks like Google adapts the already existing streaming tech with a few technological enhancements (without a real big innovation) but a lot of marketing and games (partnerships) in a way, that makes it more mass market compatible. Something like that might happen in the future for VR.