UPDATED 16:31 EDT / APRIL 15 2016

NEWS

GameStop’s PlayStation VR demos prove brick-and-mortars may still be relevant

GameStop Corp seems to have finally discovered a way to entice people to actually come into their stores in an age when digital downloads are increasingly more popular than physical game copies. The company announced this week that it it will be holding in-store demonstrations of Sony’s upcoming virtual reality device, PlayStation VR.

During its recent investor day at its headquarters in Grapevine, Texas, GameStop gave investors of preview of the in-store demo that consumers will be able to experience themselves when PlayStation VR releases sometime in October of this year.

GameStop’s move proves that virtual reality may be a boon to the brick-and-mortar electronics industry, as few consumers would be likely to drop $400-$800 on a high-end electronics device without getting to see it in action themselves, especially when a number of people have reported having problems with motion sickness when using VR headsets.

This is a lesson that Samsung Corp seems to have already taken to heart, as the company has been offering Samsung Gear VR demos at a number of retail locations, including Best Buy. Obviously a $99.99 device that is powered by a smartphone many people already own is an easier sell than  something as expensive as PlayStation VR, let alone high-end PC VR headsets like Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.

“Trial drives the conversion to purchase,” John Koller, vice president of marketing at Sony Interactive Entertainment, told GameStop’s investors. “You have to be able to go into a GameStop to try this. We’ll have a fantastic technology, but you need to get your hands on it.”

GameStop Paul Raines added that the PlayStation VR demos are relatively easy to implement in the company’s stores, saying, “We’ve played all the VR that’s come through our office, and the setup time for PlayStation VR is significantly easier and the space required to demo is small, so I expect we’ll have a lot of demos in stores, unlike the Oculus or HTC.”

Photo by StockMonkeys.com 

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