Digitaltveurope.com

Virtual Reality will celebrate its first billion-dollar year in 2016, driven by approximately US$700 million (€645 million) in global hardware sales, according to Deloitte.

The professional services firm’s ‘Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions 2016’ report claims that approximately 2.5 million VR headsets and 10 million games will be sold this year.

“The notion of virtual reality is decades old, but, as with many technologies, its commercial potential has yet to be fully realised,” said Ed Shedd, partner and head of Deloitte’s technology, media and telecommunications practice.

“Virtual reality is likely to have applications for both consumer and enterprise, but this year we expect the majority of commercial activity to focus on video games.”

Elsewhere, Deloitte predicted that eSports will generate global revenues of US$500 million in 2016 – up 25% from 2015 – and will capture an audience of regular and occasional viewers of close to 150 million people worldwide.

It also estimated that mobile devices will become the leading games platform in 2016, with smartphone and tablet games to generate US$35 billion in software revenue – an increase of 20% from 2015.

This will compares to US$32 billion of revenue for PC games and US$28 billion for console games, up only 5% and 6% respectively from the previous year, according to Deloitte.