Half-Life: Alyx Boosts Valve Index Sales
That was to be expected - Half-Life: Alyx turned out to be a tremendous sales booster for the Valve Index VR goggles. However, due to the shortage of stock, at the end of last year, Oculus Quest recorded much higher sales. Everybody's happy with PlayStation VR.
The SuperData analytical group has updated its revenue forecasts for the XR (Extended Reality) market, including sales of software and VR (Virtual Reality), AR (Augmented Reality) and MR (Mixed Reality) devices. The report confirms the great interest in virtual reality sets in the last months of previous year - including Valve Index goggles, which were helped by the announcement of Half-Life: Alyx.
The latest entry from SuperData reads that in 2019 Valve sold 149,000 units of its VR set, of which 103,000 in the fourth quarter alone. This, of course, is the result of the reveal of the said Half-Life: Alyx. The announcement of the new spin-off of the iconic series has heated the atmosphere so much that Index goggles have evaporated from magazines around the world. Valve is currently doing its best to meet the high demand, which will culminate in March, when Alyx Vance's adventures will finally be on sale. It's worth noting that the high price, significantly exceeding the amount that needs to be spent even on the autonomous Oculus Quest goggles did not prevent the Index from selling like hot cakes.
However, the best-selling VR set for PC remains Oculus Quest, which found 705 thousand buyers last year. In the fourth quarter alone, 317,000 units disappeared from store shelves shelves - for reasons of simplicity and autonomy, many people considered Quest the ideal solution for a VR Christmas gift. The demand was so high that in the last months of last year there we've been witnessing periodical shortages. If it wasn't for that, Quest would probably have been ahead of Sony's PlayStation VR on the best-selling VR set list. In the fourth quarter of 2019, 338,000 PlayStation 4 owners bought the goggles.
According to SuperData's forecasts, the XR market will continue to grow steadily and its value will reach USD 14.9 billion in 2023. The sale of VR sets and their dedicated games will generate 8.2 billion dollars, while the AR/MR category, which includes for example Microsoft's advertised and popular HoloLens glasses, will generate 6.7 billion dollars. Given the forecasted value of the global gaming market last year ($152 billion according to Newzoo's estimates), as well as the expected strong growth in the coming years, it is hard to resist the impression that the niche will remain a niche for a long time to come.
