Sony PlayStation VR2 Suffers First Month Low Unit Sales, Price Cut Predicted

[konga]

$549 is a great price for the hardware being sold, and Sony may even be selling it pretty close to at cost. It is way cheaper than other headsets with similar specs and features, so it's not overpriced per se—it's just that the console market expects much lower prices. Sony should have maybe sold a lower-end alternate model for less in order to attract a wider customer base.

 

[Crackong]

If it worked with PC, I'd buy it

This

If they allow it, it would sky rocketed like the quest 2

 

[Rakhmaninov3]

Would love to try VR but right now I game on the XSX and there isn't really a headset for that yet. I hear it's amazing.

 

[Octavean]

The real victory here is that Sony ramped up manufacturing of the PS5 leading up to the PSVR2 release. This made PS5 availability much better, which, was a boon to everyone that was trying to acquire a PS5. The PS5 was like hens teeth and now even Costco has stacks of them.

For what it’s worth, I bought the original PSVR earlier in its release as a birthday present for my Son. IMO, it was serviceable but not spectacular and definitely not worth the introductory MSRP. Looking at the tech in the PSVR2, it does look like it is worth trying but not buying at its current price. It has some interesting tech like eye tracking but the controllers are definitely prone to the same occlusion issues as older VR HMD inside out tracking solutions (that is an old dog doing old tricks). Quest Pro self tracking controllers or even older outside in tracking solutions would yield superior tracking.

Anyway, Sony was likely always going to reduce the price of the PSVR2, it just looks like now they will have to do it a little sooner than expected. At ~$350 USD I might bite.

I’d be surprised if Sony ever officially supported the PSVR2 on PC. Hindsight is 20/20 and Sony still hasn’t done this with the original PSVR. I think the most anyone could reasonably expect is some industrious individual or group finds a way to hack PSVR2 support onto PC.

One would think Sony would sell the PSVR / PSVR2 at a loss in order to develop their walled garden in furtherance of selling games / services. Their unwillingness to do so strongly suggest that they don’t have the VR games / services to begin with nor do they expect to in the immediate future.

 

[trsttte]

I’d be surprised if Sony ever officially supported the PSVR2 on PC. Hindsight is 20/20 and Sony still hasn’t done this with the original PSVR. I think the most anyone could reasonably expect is some industrious individual or group finds a way to hack PSVR2 support onto PC.

True, but I think there's some semblance of extra hope vs the original PSVR. The original used a weird hdmi adaptor box to process the signal, this one just uses plain USB-C and rigth now it can already output like a 1080p display. Remains to be seen what kind of weirdness they did to the USB-C and display port alt mode that it doesn't just completely work from the start but with some hope it wasn't anything to extreme that it can't be worked around on a PC.

One would think Sony would sell the PSVR / PSVR2 at a loss in order to develop their walled garden in furtherance of selling games / services. Their unwillingness to do so strongly suggest that they don’t have the VR games / services to begin with nor do they expect to in the immediate future.

I think they know it's a niche regardless of what they do so they can't really plan to leverage a lot of economy of scale and game sales - that would be less so if they outright came out with PC drivers but oh well.

 

[konga]

Yeah, official support is never gonna come to the PSVR2. Sony is not earning a good profit off of the sales of this device (and may even be taking a loss), so they don't want anyone buying it if they aren't going to be forced to use their storefront.

 

[Leshy]

release pc drivers and you ll see peak sale

 

[Octavean]

It should be noted that there are upgrades for a subset of PSVR original titles to make them PSVR2 compliant.

Still the point is that there is no massive library of VR games on the PS5 and only time will tell if such a library is ever accrued. Naturally only a subset of said library will be to any one user’s liking.

Expecting to sell more PSVR2 units and having to adjust the expected sales downward likely won’t help make more VR games for the platform. Underestimating customer demand never really bodes well for anyone unless you include picking through the bargain bin of a store for abandoned products.

Drop the price of the PSVR2 ASAP Sony.

 

[Calenhad]

1 - let me use it as a HMD for my pc with head tracking.
2 - It has actually gone up in price, since launch, where I live.

 

[Octavean]

Something like ~7yr ago, the original PSVR was more of a novelty. So when someone hacked some semblance of PC support it might have looked like a good buying option. Now there are many VR HMD’s to choose from with PC support and that makes the PSVR2 for PS a dubious choice,…….absent a fire sale that is.