VR needs to sell 1m units to be viable, Ubisoft exec says

Virtual reality hardware will need to hit the seven figure sales milestone before it becomes a realistic proposition for triple-A publishers.

That’s according to Ubisoft’s VP of creative Lionel Raynaud, who as reported by GameSpot told a GDC roundtable that "VR would need to sell at least 1 million units to be viable for development".

VR has very much emerged as the ‘big thing’ at the ongoing GDC in San Francisco this week. As well as a brand new version of the extremely promising Oculus Rift, Sony has also revealed its PS4 VR headset, currently called Project Morpheus.

Ubisoft’s 1m figure is interesting considering that Wii U’s global sales are slowly creeping toward 6m units, yet clearly many publishers don’t regard Nintendo’s machine as an appealing platform for development.

Of course, with indie games grabbing more and more of the spotlight and in-development indie titles such as Elite Dangerous and Eve Valkyrie already getting plenty of praise, it’s probably fair to ask if traditional triple-A publishing support is as vital to the prospects of a new platform as it once was.