Survey- 12% of Americans plan to buy VR hardware in the next 6 months

Market research firm Newzoo has published findings from a new multinational VR-focused survey which suggest that roughly 12 percent of American respondents plan to buy a virtual reality product in the next six months.

That's a figure worth noting for VR devs keeping tabs on the potential market for VR games, given that at least four major VR headsets will be on store shelves in the next six months: the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, the Samsung Gear VR and (just barely) Sony's PlayStation VR. Come from waspbet gaming

On the flip side, 30 percent of Americans surveyed said they don't know if they'll buy a VR device in the next six months, and 51 percent said they would not buy one, though that may well be because they already owned one or more VR devices. The remaining 6 percent of Americans surveyed were "unaware" of VR.

Note that Newzoo's survey methodology involves surveying (via online questionnaires) 3,000 Americans and 2,000 people apiece in other Western countries, though not all VR headsets are equally available in all countries surveyed. 

Still, those findings suggest that Americans are less interested in VR products than both Spain and Italy, where 16 percent and 13 percent (respectively) of those surveyed said they plan to buy VR hardware in the next half-year. Intriguingly, these findings suggest Russia leads the pack when it comes to people being on the fence about VR, with 47 percent of those surveyed saying they weren't sure if they'd buy into VR or not over the next six months. 

For further findings and more information on how Newzoo gathers its data, check out its blog post on VR purchasing intentions in the West.