VR Headsets Reach 4 Million Sold According to Nvidia CES 2019 Keynote

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VR has reached 4 million headsets sold on PC according to a recent statistic touted by Nvidia during their CES 2019 keynote address.
During Nvidia’s CES 2019 keynote address last night in Las Vegas the co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang was accompanied by an image of statistics that included “4M PC VR Headsets.”

This indicates that according to Nvidia at least 4 million PC VR headsets have been sold since their introduction to the market in March and April of 2016 with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive respectively. Nvidia is primarily a GPU designer, GeForce, and has expanded further into hardware with the Nvidia Shield, a handheld console that launched in 2013 and received a tablet version in 2014. While they are not the direct source of headset sales as one of the two largest GPU companies they would have a very good idea on how many headsets are out there being used.

Sony announced that PlayStation VR has sold 3 million in August 2018, with a December update stating that 1.3 million units were sold in 2018 alone. Top games included Farpoint, Worlds VR, and Batman: Arkham VR. Meanwhile sales data for Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive are few and far between. A good idea of their status comes from an Andrew House interview in September 2017 in which he discusses not being comfortable as the market leader in VR, with a million units having been sold in the first eight months of PSVR’s availability and 500,000 sold from June-August of that year. In Q1 2017 it sold 375,000 PlayStation VR units according to Superdata, continuing to outpace both Oculus and HTC.

Despite the lack of solid numbers from Oculus or HTC, analysis of third-party data, such as Amazon sales rankings timelines, show a growing decline in VR sales. SuperData confirmed as much with shipments in 2018 much slower when compared to previous years. Though as is generally thought, VR is not just a games application but is seeing more use in educational centers such as schools and hospitals.

ZeniMax and Oculus have finally reached a settlement for a lawsuit that started back in 2014 and after a jury ruled in favor of ZeniMax for $500 million, then $250 million, and now an undisclosed amount agreed upon between the two companies separate from the courts. Reported shakeups in staff and the cancellation of Rift 2 within Oculus led to Brendan Iribe’s departure in October 2018. Oculus is set to release a standalone VR unit called the Oculus Quest in spring of this year.

Meanwhile HTC launched the Vive Pro for $799 in April 2018, and a standalone Vive Focus worldwide in November after a timed exclusivity in China.