'Stuttering' Virtual Reality Market to Get Push from Second-Gen Systems, Says Report
Innovation is ahead for a “stuttering” virtual reality market, said a Thursday Futuresource report, citing lack of brick-and-mortar retail support and a “turbulent hype cycle.” Though the market has been slow to build on early momentum, demand is rising for…
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VR gaming and head-mounted displays, Futuresource said, predicting 220 percent growth this year for game content to $1.3 billion. “Mass market uptake is going to be gradual, but it is going to happen” as content evolves, the user experience improves and price threshold to entry drops, said Futuresource analyst Michael Boreham. Full game sales and downloads are expected to dominate the VR games market, led by Steam and Oculus, first in the “PC VR space” and then “building out a presence in mobile VR,” which the analyst sees as the best hope for establishing a market foothold. Boreham predicts mobile VR will divide into two segments: Google’s Cardboard platform at the entry level and second-generation all-in-one HMDs from Lenovo, HTC and Oculus that bring more immersive VR capability to the mobile sector with each device offering six degrees of freedom. In the console space, PlayStation VR is expected to remain the only choice available, with Microsoft reversing a decision to bring VR to Xbox One and Nintendo having no plans for it, despite patents for Nintendo Switch with provision for VR. Augmented reality, where virtual elements are viewed through a mobile device and layered over the real world, has grown this year with the launch of ARKit and ARCore, which has created a development platform for AR applications for Android and iOS. Futuresource credited a “resurgent” Pokemon Go and other AR gaming experiences based on Harry Potter, Jurassic World and Ghostbusters with returning the market to growth and projected sales of $600 million this year.