VR more popular on consoles than PC

This year will see the release of all three major VR options – the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Playstation VR.

With the gaming industry gearing up for the year of virtual reality, recent survey results would indicate that not everyone is ready to welcome the change to the gaming market.

A study conducted by gamesindustry.biz concludes that console gamers are more interested in VR gaming than their PC counterparts:

A new exclusive survey question commissioned by GamesIndustry.biz has indicated that console gamers across Europe are more interested in investing in VR technology than their PC counterparts, with 63 per cent of console players indicating interest in VR, compared to just 51 per cent of PC gamers.

When that category was restricted to PS4 and Xbox One gamers the percentage of interested players rose to 72 per cent.

“Wearing a special headset linked to devices such as computers or games consoles, you will be able to move around within virtual three dimensional environments and see and hear as if you were actually there.

This could include playing video games, as well as interacting with other content (such as films or simulated environments). Assuming the price was acceptable to you, how interested would you be in having this type of ‘virtual reality’ technology at home?”

Microsoft currently doesn’t have a VR headset in development, choosing to instead focus on Augmented Reality. In addition, it was only European gamers who were surveyed – a relatively small subset of the gaming market.

Two of the three upcoming VR headsets (Facebook’s Oculus Rift and HTC’s Vive) are designed solely for PC, and while it could be argued that PC gamers are more knowledgeable about the massive prices required for VR gaming, the survey explicitly asked respondents to ignore pricing.

There is no official release date or pricing on any of the three VR headsets in South Africa.