PlayStation VR Retail Demos Coming Soon | MOUSE n JOYPAD

PlayStation VR is coming to a GameStop near you very soon. At a recent GameStop investors’ meeting, Vice President John Koller announced the shipping of 500,000 VR demos to their stores. These will be displayed and hopefully playable right in your local GameStop. Koller seemed optimistic and also pointed out that VR “needs to be lived to be believed.” He also goes on to state that “Trial drives the conversion to purchase, We’ll have a fantastic technology, but you need to get your hands on it.”

On the opposite end, GameStop CEO Paul Raines stated that there will be “a lot of [Playstation VR] demos in stores,” but also noted that there won’t be quite as many as there are of Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive. This will certainly be a disadvantage for Sony.

It is important to note that of the major three VR competitors, Sony will be the one with the least amount of demos ready at retail stores in mass quantities. However, PlayStation VR has already been the frontrunner for the less hardcore fans. One of the 38.8 billion (54% of console sales globally) Ps4 owners could essentially buy a VR bundle and set it up without the hassle of drivers, frame rate issues, and crashes that PC owners may well receive while using other VR solutions. This move will surely provide Sony with more interest from the more mainstream market. Also these demos might even attract Xbox users to migrate over to the PS4 creating even more hardware sells for Sony.

Fortune reported on the matter, saying GameStop will be a “key launch partner” for Sony. They also added that GameStop will see a “significant” amount of PlayStation VR headsets being shipped to a slew of different locations. These will be fully dedicated to PlayStation VR and will be purely for demo purposes.

President of worldwide studios at Sony and overall VR pioneer Shuhei Yoshida was also cautiously optimistic all the way back in March. Speaking to kindafunny games about PlayStation VR Yoshida stated “It is important to educate [retail workers] who are just setting this up at the shop.” He also agrees with Koller on the fact that VR needs to be experienced to be fully understood. He stated “For each one [person] who is excited for PlayStation VR [they] had one moment or one demo that made us convert from a skeptic to a passionate believer.”

With everyone at Sony passionate about the new hardware it is hard to resist the hype. Nonetheless this news important for the people who would like to try the hardware before spending five hundred on it.