VR’s Record Growth Year and the Road Ahead

On Monday, PricewaterhouseCoopers served up a promising data point for the VR industry’s health. In its annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook report, PwC estimated VR content revenue hit $1.8 billion last year, a 31.7% increase over the previous year. That’s an acceleration from the 25% growth reported for 2019.

That makes VR the fastest growing segment in the report, though still quite small compared to, well, just about every other category of media PwC keeps tabs on. Digging deeper into the report, PwC expects that VR will be able to maintain the rate of growth it saw last year, forecasting 30% global growth over a five year period. That translates to a projected $6.9 billion in content revenue by 2025—huge for VR, but tiny compared to the $194 billion PwC projects for overall videogame revenues. Even global box office revenue is expected to be six to seven times higher than VR content’s take in 2025, despite an expected decline caused by a shift to home streaming.