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So many massage chairs at CES.

I was at CES last week. It was my first time to enjoy all that the Las Vegas Convention center has to offer… which included a lot more massage chairs than I would have expected and around 50 drone companies. One of the most exciting spots was the VR section. There were hour long lines for many experiences, there was a roller coaster that was built like an enormous mechanical arm that held you in a cage and would spin you around while in VR, there were countless headsets (After all, consumer electronics does normally mean hardware), and there were all types of companies showing off their stuff. However, there was one station that was surprisingly quiet for being one of the major players in the space… and that one area was set up for PlaystationVR.

In the last year as Virtual Reality has picked up steam, we constantly hear about the Oculus (BTW I’m an Oculus Fanboy), and a chance to get to try a HTC Vive has been a treat (Boost VC has one), but Sony has been surprisingly quiet the whole year. There is a distinct possibility that they consider the market “cute” and don’t want to push hard on it yet. But I think that they are going to be playing big in 2016 and here’s why.

Distribution

This graphic only shows numbers through June 2015 with 25m, link to 35m Venture Beat article.

Sony recently set record numbers for their console release of Playstation 4, they have sold more than 35 million game systems. There are now more than 35 million Playstation 4’s in the wild! Although the Playstation 4 is not as powerful as some desktop computers (they recommend for best play for the Vive or Rift to use NVIDIA GTX 970, or AMD R9 390, and a CPU equivalent to an Intel i5–4590 and the Playstation has less computing and graphics power than that), Playstation has 35 million users who will have access to enough computing power to use a VR headset, and that VR headset will only work with the Playstation 4.

Content

It has been 20 years since the first Playstation was released. In that time they have sourced thousands of incredible games with incredible content, many of which are the staple games of today. If there is one company that understands that “content is king” it is Sony. They have stayed in the top 3 consoles for 20 years, and continue to create hit games for their system. I don’t think that it will be difficult for Sony to recruit developers to develop for their VR platform. They have a huge wingspan and they are going to flex it. Playstation understands gaming, and gaming is going to be big in VR.

In addition, Sony has a production company that owns the rights to an amazing amount of IP. They will have branded content from day 1.

They have been watching

In 2015, Sony watched as Oculus came out with the touch (What is the touch?), and the HTC Vive had arguably the best experience - Tilt Brush. They saw what worked and what didn’t. They have done enough experimentation to stay in the race. I think that in 2016 they will be doubling down. Oculus will launch in March, the Vive will launch in April, and then Sony will launch before summer. I think they are behind in development, but they are ahead in distribution and content.

Its going to be an exciting year in VR.