Entertainment at head of virtual reality applications

Joseph O'Halloran
| 22 June 2016

Gaming might have been the first area to adopt virtual reality (VR) but entertainment, travel, home design and virtual education top of the list for VR use cases, says research from Greenlight VR.

Greenlight VR 22 June 2016The 2016 Virtual Reality Consumer Report surveyed more than 1,200 respondents about their level of personal interest in a number of virtual reality use case categories and on topics relating to experiences, attitudes and purchase intentions for VR hardware and content. The top six use case categories identified by consumers were travel, tourism or adventure (73.5%), movies and recorded videos (67.3%), live events (67.0%), home design (65.9%), education (63.9%) and then gaming (61.0%). Nearly three-quarters (71.4%) in the key high-tech spending demographic used VR for films and recorded videos.

“Virtual reality has always been more than a medium for gaming experiences and consumers understand that,” said Clifton Dawson, CEO of Greenlight VR and author of the report. “Our findings from multiple studies suggest that some players in the VR ecosystem may be overly focused on gaming. The reality is that consumers have a wide variety of interests for using virtual reality. Platform and content providers would be wise to consider these bigger, richer findings as they develop their content portfolio and marketing strategies.”

“Overall, we were struck by the strongly positive and broad interest in VR in general, and in specific uses in particular,” added Steve Marshall, senior vice president of research and consulting for Greenlight VR. “Given all the attention ... we expected to find gaming as the primary consumer interest in VR. The reality is consumers have a variety of interests in VR.”