Sony enters virtual
reality race with PlayStation VR headset
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[October 12, 2016]
By Makiko Yamazaki
TOKYO
(Reuters) - Sony Corp will join the race for virtual reality (VR)
dominance on Thursday with the $399 PlayStation VR, a headset the
Japanese electronics group hopes will beat pricier rivals and revive its
reputation as a maker of must-have gadgets.
Emerging from years of restructuring, Sony is reshaping itself to focus
on lucrative areas such as video games, entertainment and camera sensors
- rather than televisions or smartphones where demand is flat,
competition acute and margins thin. The games unit is now the single
largest profit contributor for the group.
The PlayStation VR headset, Sony's first major product launch since it
declared its turnaround complete in June, will put the company back on
the offensive and test its ability to compete in one of the most
talked-about spaces in the industry.
Rival offerings in virtual reality headsets include Facebook Inc's $599
Oculus Rift and HTC Corp's $799 Vive.
Sony hopes to lure in customers with its more modest price tag and by
tapping the 40 million existing users of its flagship consoles - the
headset is designed to plug into PlayStation 4, rather than requiring
new equipment.
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"Sony is well-positioned to build an early lead in the high-end VR
headset race," market researcher IHS Technology said in a report,
forecasting sales of 1.4 million units in 2016.
Sony, developer of the Walkman portable cassette player and maker of the
first compact disc player, hopes the headset will be a springboard to
pull ahead of rivals in VR, gelling with the content portion of its
business, specifically music and film.
In an interview with Reuters in September, Andrew House, Sony's gaming
division chief, said he was already in talks with media production
companies to explore possibilities for Sony's VR headset. [nL3N1BQ397]
"We are talking about years into the future, but these are interesting
conversations to start having now," House said.
Sony, however, will compete in a crowded market. Nomura analysts expect
cumulative shipments of all VR headsets to expand more than 20 times to
40 million by 2020, which along with accessories and other non-game
content could be worth $10 billion.
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![](../images/101216pics/busine47.jpg)
A hostess helps a woman to wear Sony's PlayStation VR headset at
Tokyo Game Show 2016 in Chiba, east of Tokyo, Japan, September 15,
2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo
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Mark
Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said last week the Oculus business will
spend $500 million to fund VR content development and is working on an
affordable standalone VR headset not tethered to personal computers or consoles.
Other
new entrants include chipmakers Intel Corp and Qualcomm Inc, which said they are
working on standalone headsets. They plan to make their technologies available
to help developers make headsets using their chipsets or systems.
To counter those competitors, Sony may have to eventually open up its
PlayStation console to make it compatible with other headsets, said Atsushi
Osanai, a former Sony official who is now professor at Japan's Waseda University
Business School.
Sony's largest gaming rival Microsoft Corp plans to release a new Xbox One
console next year that is expected to support VR headsets of its partners
including Oculus. [nL4N1953US]
(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
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