Japan Research Pack

PS VR launch date set at 13 October

    A number of companies held press conferences on 13 June (local time) ahead of theopening of the E3 games show in Los Angeles. On the hardware front, Sony [6758]announced that the PlayStation VR will go on sale on 13 October, but it did notannounce any new PS4 console. This came as no surprise after the Financial Timespublished a comment from Sony Interactive Entertainment president Andrew House on10 June that the company was developing the new hardware but would not show it atE3. Meanwhile, Microsoft announced the Xbox One S, and upgraded version of itscurrent model (due for release in August 2016) and Project Scorpio, its most powerfulconsole to date (due for release in time for the end-2017 shopping season). Scorpiowill feature much better graphics performance, with a 6-teraflops GPU, enabling highqualityVR. The company appears to be aiming to connect the console to the OculusRift or other head-mounted displays, and we think it will lead to growth in the VRmarket alongside the PS VR.

    Steady announcement of major titles ahead of October PS VR release

    On the software front there has been a string of major title announcements for the PSVR. A total of 50 titles are due for launch in 2016. Companies under our coverage witha high level of involvement are Capcom [9697] and Square Enix Holdings [9684].

    Capcom announced that the VR version of Resident Evil 7 would go on sale on 24January 2017 (we forecast sales of 6mn copies, with 3mn in Jan