What’s it like to play PSVR after months of experiencing Virtual Reality through the lenses of the HTC-Vive and Oculus Rift? Well, its pretty incredible actually.

I’ve been wholly impressed with the Playstation’s Virtual Reality headset, and it doesn’t seem like I’m alone. While calling it a “critical darling” might be a bit much, the PSVR is undeniably a surprise critical success. Look up reviews on Metacritic and you’ll find most of them sitting solidly in the 80's, with the standard line being that the headset is amazing for its cost, and doubly amazing when you consider that it is running on a Playstation 4.

After trying PSVR for myself, I have to say I agree. For its price and convenience, sony’s headset truly is the most exciting one on the market, even if it doesn’t provide the ultimate VR experience. Whereas the HTC-Vive and even the Oculus Rift have been targeted directly at the high-end PC crowd, PSVR has been targeted at the average consumer, or to put it in more specific terms, PSVR has been targeted at the owners of the nearly 50 million (as of Sony’s latest Earning’s Briefing on November 1st) PS4 units currently out in the wild. With that many consoles already plugged into televisions all over the world, a mere 5% adoption rate of PSVR by PS4 owners would mean roughly 2.5 million in sales, just shy of the 2,602,370 units famed market research firm Superdata is anticipating.

That’s right — 2,602,370 units sold by the end of 2016. According to Superdata, the runner up in the tethered VR space is going to be the HTC-Vive with a mere 420,108 units (nearly 1/6th of PSVR sales), and in 3rd place will be Oculus Rift with 355,088 units sold.

Information found at VRFocus and verified and several other sites

PSVR is definitely the frontrunner early on, and while there are a number of factors contributing to this (price and convenience being chief among them), there are two other factors that are helping PSVR do things like sell 50,000 units in its first 4 days in Japan or have the fastest preorder sellout in Gamestop’s history.

(1) Quality VR deemphasizes the need for top-notch graphics: For years the graphical arms race has been deadening the souls of developers and gamers alike. Don’t misunderstand, gorgeous visuals are fantastic, but the amount of time and money that has gone into improving graphical fidelity in spite of diminishing returns over the years has become tiresome in the industry. PSVR is proving that you don’t need the most high-end graphics to have a great time in VR. I’ve talked with a number of developers about this and the general consensus is that, when you’re in VR, you’re in that world. Whatever that world looks like is what it looks like. It doesn’t detract from the experience to have simpler textures because the headtracking makes it feel so real, even in spite of any previous expectations of what that world should look like. So, when you’re playing Eve: Valkyrie and the textures on your giant spaceship machine guns aren’t quite as shiny in a PSVR as they are in an Oculus Rift, you don’t care as much… because you’re flying through space shooting giant machine guns!