PSVR 2 Is The Wrong Device, At The Wrong Time, At The Wrong Price

There’s a new report from Bloomberg that Sony will lower sales forecasts for the PSVR 2 after pre-orders fell short. According to the report (which admittedly, Bloomberg missed Sony’s internal reports earlier), the forecast is being cut from 2 million to 1 million for the launch quarter. The headset was launched in just three weeks on February 22.

I wasn’t that surprised when I heard that Sony was making a second PSVR headset, as the first one was the most popular of its VR generation, but Sony doesn’t seem to have misled a lot of cases here for the second time:

• PSVR 2 Price $550 – Above not only its Meta Quest competitors, both current and possible future, but also more expensive than the high-end PS5 itself.
• You need a PS5 to play it – That’s something else. Meta Quest is standalone, while you’ll also need to own a PS5 to use PSVR 2. That may have been more acceptable when other VR headsets needed to be connected to high-end computers, but standalone sets have exploded since then. .
• It has a thread – Also, this is not what many VR players expect in 2023, when most VR headsets, including the Meta, are now wireless, while here, you will still be tethered to your PlayStation.

• Launch Games Are Limited – The new Horizon VR title is its biggest draw at launch, but then again, it’s charging $550 for something just for a smattering of games, and most of them are ports because…
• PSVR 2 Not Backward Compatible – I can imagine many people who enjoyed the PSVR 1 and yet were very disappointed to find out that the entire library does not transfer to the new unit. I understand, technically, why that might happen, but it’s unheard of to be asked to A) buy expensive new hardware and B) not have backwards compatibility when that’s become so common in the console space itself.

Finally, I’m not sure that continuing to invest heavily in VR is the right move right now. We’re watching Meta’s big VR ambitions come close to sinking the entire multi-billion dollar company. While VR has experienced some growth, it hasn’t exploded by any means, and the release of the next big VR headset isn’t anywhere near as expected as the next regular console drop. There’s a reason Microsoft and Nintendo stay far away from this road.

If PSVR 2 doesn’t do so well and Meta keeps burning money in its ecosystem, it feels like we’re headed for a place where a few big companies continue to invest heavily in the VR space for a long time. The technological breakthrough always feels like 5-10 years away, but here we are, almost seven years after it was first mentioned, and even if the technology has advanced, it is in many ways facing more challenges than before. , and some features feel retrograde.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook again Instagram. Sign up for my free content collection newsletter, God Rolls.

Take my sci-fi novels Herokiller series again The Earthborn Trilogy.