Sony’s CEO is seemingly very impressed by the PSVR. Rather than seeing it as just a VR gaming headset, Kaz Hirai, Sony’s CEO, thinks it’s success is helping the company as a whole.
While talking to Financial Review, Kaz Hirai explained that Sony as a company had many more areas and divisions outside of PlayStation, and hence the company could benefit from focusing on and promoting VR. “We have a lot of professional business groups that are involved trying to come up with professional cameras for VR content creation” Hirai explained. “And we also involve Sony Pictures and Sony Music from the content perspective.”
The PSVR currently already has some music videos available for download, and the headset was also used to promote the Ghostbusters movie. So, marketing the headset as not just a gaming platforn but as an entertainment device as well will market it to a broader audience and help Sony implement the headset in other divisions of the company outside of just PlayStation.
Hirai further went on to say “So as a company it’s important that VR is successful, not just because it helps the video game business but in fact the tide actually lifts all the Sony boats. We stand probably to benefit more than some of the other companies that are pursuing VR, because we are involved in so many different aspects that touch the VR experience and the content creation”.
The PSVR has been pretty successful so far, with over a million units sold as of February 2017. But a great challenge still lies ahead, since Sony has to push the headset out of just gaming and into the world of entertainment and commercial oppurtunities for business use. VR as a whole too is a relatively new technology, and has a long way to go before becoming mainstream and accessible to the masses.
Hopefully, Sony will continue to innovate in this field and overcome this challenge, because we would love to see the PSVR being used to it’s full extent as an affordable entertainment headset.
