GameStop CEO Announces During TV Interview Stores Will Carry PlayStation VR
posted Sunday Feb 21, 2016 by Nicholas DiMeo
Virtual reality has seen a resurgence in the past couple of years. Seemingly everybody is wanting their hand in the game and even big players like Google and Sony have put their hat into the mix. Sony has been working on the PlayStation VR for about a year now and until this week, was looking for a retail home for the device.
In a live interview on FOX News, GameStop CEO Paul Raines proudly announced that the retail game store will play host to the PlayStation VR when it launches in the third quarter of this year. Raines also dropped the names of Oculus and HTC as the other two companies he is in talks with.
"We will launch the Sony product this fall and we're in discussions with the other two players," said Raines, adding that GameStop is the "destination for hardware in the United States."
The launch period is of importance because an earlier report from Wired indicated that we would see PlayStation VR hit the market before June of this year. Now that the CEO of a company who is going to carry the product has spoken, we can confidently believe that we'll see it in the fall as he stated. It's also a more fitting time frame, as hardware launching during the holiday shopping time typically has a higher rate of success.
Sony is looking to retain top hardware spot as of late, with the revival of sales for the Xbox One slowly shrinking the market share gap. With almost 36 million PS4s sold, Sony could easily capture those gamers who want a virtual reality experience on a console instead of a PC. Sony could also bundle the VR headset with a PS4 for the holidays in order to attract new users to the gaming platform.
The short interview clip is available after the break.