A New Twist To The Nintendo-VR Love Story

Nintendo and VR

Several reports have been doing the rounds on whether leading Japanese video game maker Nintendo will include virtual reality technology in its next gaming console, NX, to be released in March. However, the latest report from Wall Street Journal says that the technology won’t make it to NX.

Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the world-famous franchises such as Mario and Legend of Zelda was quoted as saying,

We’ve been looking at the technology, but we should also see how it fits into our products that are designed to use for the long term and how parents would feel about their children mounting VR devices.

Tokyo-based video game consultant Serkan Toto said that the company was making the right call as virtual reality is still years away from becoming mainstream.

While Nintendo is taking a cautious approach towards virtual reality, leading competitors Samsung, Sony Corp. and Microsoft are aggressively pursuing the technology, apart from Google and Facebook. Samsung has teamed up with NBC to broadcast 85 hours of the 2016 Rio Olympics in virtual reality.

According to the WSJ report, Sony expects to release a VR headset in October. Microsoft Corporation which owns the Xbox franchise has plans to release a VR console, code-named “Project Scorpio,” next year.

SuperData Research expects VR hardware sales to reach $22.86 billion by 2019 and double the following year to $40.26 billion.

Samsung leads the market in expected shipments of premium VR devices, totaling 3.5 million by 2016E. Sony closely follows with projected shipments of 2.6 million devices due to its integration with PS4 and its position in the gaming market. Gamers are expected to contribute to 78% of sales in 2016, but this spending will fall to 28% of overall spend by 2020E.

HTC Vive and Oculus Rift are set to ship a combined 1.1 million devices this year.