With the HTC Vive opening up for pre-order yesterday, we were waiting with anticipation to find out just how many units of the SteamVR headset would be claimed by early adopters. According to a tweet from HTC's Shen Ye, that number is larger than we would have expected:
This is especially impressive, considering the Vive's high-end US$799 asking price. Because of this response, new pre-orders are expected to now begin shipping in May.
However, UploadVR is reporting that some users attempting to put down a pre-order are now encountering a 'sold out' screen. HTC later clarified that this was likely a glitch, and that refreshing the store page would solve the issue:
Oculus is similarly happy with its own cryptically-hinted-at pre-order numbers. Combined with the Rift's presence at retail - a strategy that the more installation-like Vive setup could really capitalise on - it will be interesting to see who comes out on top.
Awesome news for the hardware manufactures this news. But 15,000 units is not many for all of the game developers creating VR-only content (that I imagine has been expensive to produce).
That's only for the first 10 minutes of going up for preorder. I assume that the preorders will be something of an inverse bell curve - most coming in the first few days and then petering out to a trickle within a couple of months. My generous estimates put the Vive's sales for two months somewhere in the region of 80,000 - 120,000 units. That's not too shabby, especially considering most users will buy their fair share of content.
Yeah I believe these adopters will be buying up all of the early high quality games and content. Just like in the early days of mobile when new games saw tons of success before the charts went stagnant.