Sony bullish on virtual reality but is mindful of hype
‘Breaking Bad’ experience coming to PlayStation VR
As the executive in charge of the PlayStation business, you’d expect Andrew House to be bullish on virtual reality — and he is. But the president and global CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment also wants to keep it real.
“At the risk of being a little bit controversial, I think analysts in the space have been guilty of some very strong hype there,” he told USA TODAY in an interview. “I’ve said this is very, very early days and a very new medium, and it’s going to grow slowly and organically over time. This is VR 1.0. It’s going to be a long road.”
Facebook, Google, Samsung and others have invested billions into virtual reality, the fully immersive experiences that typically require a bulky headset and often a pricy computer or console, with its proponents envisioning a new frontier for communication. But despite tan- talizing the public with far-out experiences like a walk with dinosaurs and pop-up showcases in malls and airports, virtual reality has yet to really catch on. Market researcher CCS Insight slashed its forecast for hardware sales earlier this year to reflect this slow start.
Still, House says he has been pleased with how PlayStation VR is doing. Sony sold more than 1 million hardware units since its launch last October and 5.25 million VR games globally. There have been 37.9 million VR play sessions during that time, with the average session lasting 25 minutes.
“I think we could have sold more than that number, particularly in places like Japan,” House says. “But we’ve set very conservative targets on it.”
House likens VR to a theme park — experiences that are short but very intense.
House weighed in on the state of the all-things PlayStation during a sit-down in advance of the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo video game conference, beginning June 13 in Los Angeles.
At E3, Sony plans to announce a new virtual reality experience for PlayStation VR built around
Breaking Bad, with details still being hammered out with series creator Vince Gilligan.
Ahead of E3, House revealed how other aspects of the PlaySation business is doing, which he declared is profitable. Sony has sold 60 million PS4 units overall, with one in five the pricier and more powerful PS4 Pro models that provide gamers a 4K video experience. Some 645 million hours have been spent gaming on PS4 Pro, Sony says. FIFA 17,
Grand Theft Auto V and Final Fantasy XV have been top titles. To capitalize on the buzz around E3, Sony will drop the price on select PS4 systems from $299 to $249, between June 9 and June 17, with additional discounts on software and accessories.
House also reported that users of the company’s online PlayStation Network are spending 26 billion minutes per week on gaming alone. Network sales have grown 47% year over year. Sony now has 26.4 million subscribers on its premium PS Plus service.
According to House, the interactive PlayStation Vue “over-thetop” streaming TV service now has more users on non-PlayStation devices than on PlayStation devices, with the average video viewing session lasting five hours. The Vue service is available on Android TV, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Roku streaming devices, as well as on desktop browsers.
Sony added Disney, ABC and ESPN channels to the Vue lineup last year along with the NFL Network and HBO but dropped all of Viacom’s channels, including Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon. House claims there has been no viewer backlash.
“We haven’t seen any negative impact on subscriptions as a result,” he says.
House parsed his words carefully when asked why Sony ditched Viacom. “I’m just going to say that it was in an attempt to create, to optimize the value proposition for the consumers on the service based on the viewership we were seeing.”