Delivered at Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2018. The main problem that the VR market faces today is that it didn’t expand as expected and a lot of studios struggle to survive the current state of the VR market. Flat Hill Games is a studio that is exclusively developing games for VR and in this session you will hear how they design their games to be profitable and how to cut down the costs of VR projects without sacrificing final quality and content length.

1. Can VR be profitable today?
Adrian Djura
CEO & Founder
Flat Hill Games

2. Flat Hill Games

3. Guesstimating No. of
copies you can sell in VR
How to be profitable
selling VR games?

4. Guesstimating No. of copies
you can sell in VR

5. VR headsets
2016 2017 Q1 2018 Q2 2018 Total
Oculus Rift 243.000 326.000 139.740 102.000 810.740
HTC Vive 420.000 297.000 152.070 111.000 980.070
Sony PSVR 745.000 1.693.000 127.410 93.000 2.658.410
Source SuperData SuperData
*IDC (37% more
than Q2 2018) IDC
Celebrating 3 Million PS VR Systems Sold (Source: Sony, 16th August 2018)

6. VR headsets
3m PSVR
≈1m HTC VIVE
≈1m Oculus Rift

7. SteamVR No. copies
1629 VR only games – avg. 6.203 units owned
• 636 titles sold more than 1000 copies - avg. 12.241 units owned
• 516 titles with price more than 10$, avg 11.477 units owned
• 242 titles with price more than 20$, avg 18.639 units owned
≈ 12.000 copies per title
*Source: SteamSpy with custom scraper from 23rd September 2018

8. PSVR No. copies
• Official data
• 3m PSVR headset sold
• 21.9m titles sold for PSVR
• Total 340 title on PSVR
• Average titles sold: 21.9m / 340 title = 64.000 copies per title
• Let’s assume that everybody got 1 title with bundle and bought 3
more top selling titles
• 21.9M – (1X3M + 3X3M) = 9.9M for the rest of 336 titles
• Average copies sold for them is 9.9m / 336 title ≈ 29.500 copies per title

9. Multiplatform sales data

10. Summarizing data
• PSVR: 3m, SteamVR: 1m, Oculus: 1m – Headsets sold
• PSVR: 46%, SteamVR: 24%, Oculus: 30% - Multiplatform sales data
• PSVR ≈ 29.500, SteamVR ≈ 12.000, Oculus ≈ Unknown – Calculated data
50% PSVR, 25% SteamVR, 25% Oculus
24.000 (PSVR) + 12.000 (SteamVR) + 12.000 (Oculus)
48.000 copies for VR game

11. How to be profitable?

12. Team size
“If you go too big, you can’t recoup your cost with today’s install base. If you go too
small, the content isn’t compelling enough to sell to a large enough customer base.
The sweet spot is around 10 people working for a year; if they cover enough platforms
to get a sizable market, or branch out into industrial and business VR there’s hope.”
Nick Whiting, technical director of virtual and augmented reality at Epic Games
Up to 10 people max

13. Choosing the right project
• Our PiIlars:
• VR only
• No narrative
• Replayable content
• Social features (avatar customization, leaderboards…)
• Multiplayer
Focus on your strengths

14. Multiplatform and play sizes

15. Stay within budget
• Set the price for you game and set minimum number of copies that
you need to break even
40.000 – 50.000 copies for VR game*
(* Maximum you should target if you are developing on all platforms)

16. Thank You!
adrian.djura@gmail.com