Virtual Reality Game Data & How to Launch a VR Game [Part 3]
My name is Tera Nguyen. I am a Producer, passionate in using spatial computing technologies to enable new forms of entertainment, education, productivity, and social interaction. In Jan 2019, I started writing this blog series that aimed at helping indie developers price and market their VR games as well as setting the right expectations for consumers on upcoming VR content.
In part 2, I generated charts from Steam’s data to learn about the current state of the VR industry. For this part, I will talk about the patterns of financially successful VR games by analyzing 94 top-selling titles on Steam.
But first, let’s talk about pricing. Pricing a video game has always been a headache for indie devs, let alone VR games. This gets worse when the VR industry is still in its infancy with little to no point of comparison. How to price a VR game depends on a variety of factors, one of which is the total addressable market size. Lack of information on the VR headsets’ install base leads to potentially low total unit sales for VR games, which requires studios to price their titles at a high price to reflect the cost of development and marketing. On the other hand, players have no preconception of how much a VR game is worth and tend to compare their expectation of gameplay per dollar to either an indie PC title, which costs $9 for 8–9 hours of gameplay, or a AAA-console game, which costs $60 for roughly 40–60 hours of gameplay. Despite that, the ratio of price over gameplay length isn’t a good indicator for a desirable game. I will discuss more on this in a future post.
The most popular price tags are within $15 to $19.99 with examples include Beat Saber, GORN, and Job Simulator — all are originally priced at $19.99. Twelve titles that individually cost more than $30 are considered as premium ones, with five coming from an existing franchise, including Fallout 4, Serious Sam, Star Trek, and the Elder Scrolls. Meanwhile, Aerofly FS 2 Flight Simulator is an interesting top-selling case despite not coming from a franchise. Due to its specialization, the title is catered to an established crowd of sim fliers who are willing to pay $59.99 for a realistic experience.
Similarly to my point in part 2 on the lack of correlation between pricing and number of purchase, the chart above continues to show that current VR headset owners are willing to spend more for well-made VR games, thanks to the higher cost of franchise titles.
…and they are also spending more time playing these games.
The popular genre of top-selling titles on Steam weakens my assumption in part 2 about VR being potentially targeted to casual gamers. A low amount of casual games in the chart above indicates that the current audience for VR games is still mostly hardcore gamers (as of 2018). This could be because the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift both require an expensive gaming computer to run, which limit the accessibility for non-gamers. I wonder how this might change when the Oculus Quest is released to the market.
In summary
1/ There is nothing conclusive on a sweet spot for pricing an indie or AAA-quality title (the range can go from $8 - $59.99). Franchise titles can be priced from $39.99 to $59.99.
2/ Designing simulation games for hobbyists taps into the advantages of VR as a medium and an existing audience who is willing to pay premium price for an immersive realistic experience.
3/ Current VR headset owners are willing to pay premium price for a high-quality VR title.
4/ VR as of 2018 might still be mostly consumed by hardcore gamers rather than casual gamers.
