Popularity of Sony’s PlayStation VR surprises even the company

Even Andrew House, global CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, the video game division of the Japanese electronics giant, had doubts about how quickly virtual reality would be embraced by the mass market.

In an interview at his San Mateo office last week, House revealed PlayStation VR’s sales for the first time, saying people had purchased 915,000 of the headsets as of Feb. 19, roughly four months after it went on sale.

The sales figure is a positive sign for virtual reality and probably establishes Sony as the leader in the premium side of the market — headsets connected to PCs and game consoles that provide more immersive experiences than are currently possible through inexpensive headsets that use smartphones for visuals.

During a recent court appearance, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company would probably need to invest more than $3 billion over a decade to reach an audience of hundreds of millions of people with virtual reality.

Among the other challenges facing the technology: high prices for virtual reality equipment, limited high-quality content and thorny side effects like motion sickness.

Sony enjoyed advantages as it entered the market because its headset is sold as an add-on to its game console, PlayStation 4, more than 53 million of which had been sold by the start of January.

House said he would be “very happy” if the product ends up being purchased by a high single-digit percentage of all PlayStation 4 owners.

Biohazard, in January that is entirely playable in virtual reality.

Since that game was released, the average amount of time PlayStation VR users spend playing in the headset has doubled, House said.

Last week at its offices, Sony provided a demonstration of a new gun-shaped device, the PlayStation VR Aim controller, that will allow players to more easily aim and shoot weapons within virtual reality games.