Sex Sells: 5 Reasons VR Dating Sim Is More Promising Than Other Game Genres

Did you know that Summer Lesson, a VR dating sim, was the second most-sold game among all games in Japan in the first month of its launch?

Launched on October 13, 2016 in the Playstation Store, it quickly took second place from all games (by digital downloads) in Japan with 27,000 downloads in a month. Only Battlefield 1 did better with 43,000 downloads.

Summer Lesson is a Playstation exclusive game for Playstation VR — Sony’s virtual reality HMD (head-mounted display). You play as the tutor of the young Hikari Miyamoto while she prepares for exams. Your task is to help her get an “A” while getting close to her.

In this article I’ll explain the genre and show why it’s a more attractive business venture than other game genres.

For this, let’s take the two most well-known VR dating games: Summer Lesson and VR Kanojo. On their example you will see that

Players are hungry for VR dating games; There’s no competition in the genre; VR dating games can make as much as the most successful VR titles; Moral values are a convenient barrier to entry; There’s a lot of interest in VR dating outside of Japan.

What is VR dating?

So, basically, VR dating is what it is — a genre of virtual reality games in which the player develops a relationship with a virtual girl; from everyday conversation, even all the way to… sex.

Cooling off with a fan in Summer Lesson

Key word here: relationship. In VR dating, developing and keeping the relationship is a staple of gameplay.

Eating a candy stick in VR Kanojo

The gameplay is fairly simple: you’re in a building or locale alone with a girl and she asks you to do favors. Your progress in the relationship and the game depends on how well you carry out the favors.

These favors are usually mini-games: cool her off with a fan, bring her water in time, or check how well she does on a test (you are playing as a tutor, after all!).

There are also some intimate tasks. For example, eating a candy stick without touching it with your hands — from mouth to mouth.

While Summer Lesson сultivates a more gentle relationship, VR Kanojo is betting on sex. Watch these two trailers (safe for work) to better understand what I’m talking about.

Summer Lesson

VR Kanojo

So, what makes VR dating more attractive than other genres?

1. Players are hungry for VR dating

Which metrics point to this? In our case — YouTube views. Let’s compare the selected VR dating games to the heavy hitters: Arizona Sunshine and Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope. These are two of the most successful first-person shooter games for VR.

Let’s look at the first 15 results for these games on YouTube. Keeping in mind:

The results are sorted by the view count;

All the games launched around the same time;

Almost all the games are on both the HTC Vive and Oculus platforms;

Added “VR” to the front of the search for more accurate results.

Here it is:

The total number of views on YouTube for the first 15 results, sorted by view count

VR Kanojo has the least videos (YouTube mainly hosts Western videos after all), but still has almost 3 times as many views as Arizona Sunshine. It’s amazing. Summer Lesson also has more views than the first-person shooters.

What’s even more interesting: there’s a clear correlation between erotica and views. VR Kanojo has the most erotica and has significantly more views.

Ok, but what about the competition?

2. There’s no competition.

There are 145 games and apps under the “All Oculus Touch Titles” section in the Oculus Store. At the time this article was written, 31 of these were first-person shooters. That’s according to the store’s own numbers. But there were Zero VR dating titles available.

According to Steam’s own numbers, 50% of the 1425 games in their store fall under “Action”. Only one game from a small Chinese developer, SilverMoon, can be considered VR dating, but it’s a stretch. That game is Nancy’s Summer VR for $9.99.

Out of only 50 VR titles in the Playstation Store, only one is for dating: Summer Lesson. But the story of how Sony selected these 50 titles for the Playstation VR “launch window” is a whole different issue that I won’t get into here.

Will VR dating start making money?

3. VR dating has the same earning potential as the most successful VR titles

The first-person shooter Arizona Sunshine made $1.4 million in its first month and holds the record for most sales (according to developers). This means the game was purchased 35,000 times.

To understand if VR dating games can really make even the same amount, let’s compare the revenue from Summer Lesson to Arizona Sunshine.

For total fairness in comparing them, let’s imagine that Summer Lesson was launched overseas also. But how many copies it could have sold there?

To answer this, let’s look at VR Kanojo’s (as a look-a-like product’s) official site traffic and say this is a breakdown of Summer Lesson’s sales by geography.

Here it is:

http://vrkanojo.com traffic for March, broken down by country

We can’t take traffic to Summer Lesson’s own site because it is only sold through the Playstation Store, so it is not accurate.

We know that Summer Lesson sold 27,000 copies in its first month in Japan. Let’s say it is 62% of sales from our breakdown. That’s $756,000 in revenue just from Japan (27,000 * $28 = $756,000).

If the percentage of sales in Japan is 62%, then the percentage for other countries is 38%. That’s another 16,548 copies and $463,344 in revenue from outside of Japan (16,548 * $28 = $463,344).

Even with zero presence in the West (according to SimilarWeb VR Kanojo was not marketed outside of Japan), Summer Lesson could have made $1.2 million in the first month of sales, if it had been available outside of Japan. It is a “Steam” scenario in the table below.

What would have been, if the developers of Summer Lesson had localized their game and dedicated resources to marketing and PR overseas?

The game would have certainly appeared on English-speaking YouTube channels and on mainstream gaming sites. Let’s say that in that case the portion of sales from outside of Japan would have been at least 1.5 times larger, instead of 38%, 57%.

Such growth would have raised overall revenue to $1.7 mln in the first month. It is “Steam + marketing” scenario in the table below.

Comparison of the real revenues and predicted revenues for Summer Lesson in the first month

It’s worth noting that I didn’t consider sales of DLCs with new gameplay and mini-games. It’s understood that revenues would have been even higher with them, but counting these sales isn’t possible.

4. Moral values are a convenient entrance barrier

To understand which companies are ready to develop similar games, let’s examine the companies already developing them.

Starting with Illusion , the developer of VR Kanojo. They have been developing similar games since 1997 and are well known among lovers of eroge (a Japanese game genre with erotic or pornographic material).

Second, Bandai Namco, (developer of Summer Lesson) is a large Japanese holding. They develop all sorts of games and content practically for all platforms.

Both companies are Japanese. The moral barrier in this country is significantly lower. Where else in the world can you book a room in specialized Soft on Demand video stores to watch VR porno?

I didn’t find similar games in other countries (except very raw indie games). So, developing VR dating games for other markets is the perfect opportunity.

5. Interest in VR dating is high, even outside of Japan

VR Kanojo has a page on Steam Greenlight. This means the game is waiting for the greenlight from Steam’s users to launch in the general store (they have given it).

VR Kanojo’s page on Steam Greenlight

There are hundreds of comments from Chinese players asking for subtitles in simplified Chinese.

Comments from Chinese players on Steam (some translated using Google Translate)

They started a petition to have the game localized in simplified Chinese and gathered over 700 comments (signatures).

The petition, translated using Google Translate

What about Summer Lesson?

Players have commented on Reddit and gaming portals that they registered Japanese accounts on Playstation Network just to play this game.

Comments on Reddit and Dualshockers

The geographic breakdown of traffic to VR Kanojo shows the interest of non-Japanese players. Here it is, I already summarized it:

http://vrkanojo.com traffic for March, broken down by country

Almost 40% of traffic was from outside of Japan. That’s 200,000 foreign Monthly Unique Visitors in March (a total of 523,000 visited http://vrkanojo.com in March).

In conclusion

Of course, VR dating faces challenges that must be dealt with:

Some players find these games boring and creepy; Their sales are limited to VR HMD sales; They compete with games from other genres for the player’s time; Because of the erotic content, they can be barred from electronic stores.

But, if players are prepared to put up with inconveniences like:

Cultural differences; Language barrier; Lack of distribution outside of Japan; Complicated ways to pay for and download the game

their demand for such a product (here I purposely avoid the word “game”) is very high. I haven’t seen anything similar in other genres.

So, VR dating is only gaining momentum, like the entire virtual reality market. Virtual reality still has a lot of growth to experience. This technology has massive potential for many decades to come, and it’s possible that VR dating will become one of the forces driving it’s spread.

P.S. Tools I used

All of the tools I used for the analysis: