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It seems Sony is confident that PSVR 2 can outsell its predecessor, but things will have to change for that to happen.
Sony’s chief financial officer, Hiroki Totoki, was bullish on the subject of PSVR 2 surpassing the first PlayStation VR headset when speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference last week (thanks, VGC (opens in new tab)).
“We are very excited to launch VR2 on PS5,” Totoki said at the event. “VR1, we’ve sold over five million units, and I think we have a good chance of surpassing that number with PlayStation VR2.”
And while the PS5 headset is undoubtedly excellent, with excellent picture quality and welcome features like eye-tracking support, it doesn’t seem to be a hit with console owners.
PSVR 2’s pre-order performance was reportedly quite poor, and its hefty cost of $549 / £529 / AU$879 certainly won’t do it any good for the foreseeable future. It’s certainly an impressively high-end headset, but the fact that it’s more expensive than the PS5 itself is just bad optics for the average consumer.
Does PSVR 2 have a chance?
Personally, all I want is success for PSVR 2. I’ve enjoyed my time with the headset so far, and playing some of the best PSVR 2 games has been fun. Between Horizon: Call of the mountains compelling climbing and Gran Turismo 7’s breathtaking driving experience, playing games in PSVR 2 is simply fantastic.
And I know it’s still early; the headset is less than a month old at the time of writing. But right now, PSVR 2 isn’t well positioned to even scratch the surface of its predecessor’s impressive sales record.
Sony needs more exclusive products than just Horizon if it really wants to start shifting PSVR 2 units. But beyond that, the VR headset features a kneecap in a number of ways. It’s not backwards compatible with original PSVR games to begin with, meaning you’ll still need to dig out your old headset if you fancy diving back into the game Resident evil 7 or Astro Bot: Rescue Mission. As it stands, we’re relying on developers to port their PSVR games to the new headset, and that’s not a guarantee.
I’d also like to see Sony bring PSVR 2 games to its PS Plus game catalog. If players can download some exclusive VR games for the price of a monthly subscription, that will ease the strain on their wallets, especially after dropping a mountain of cash on an expensive headset.
Again, I want to emphasize that at such an early stage, we just don’t know how PSVR 2 will perform in the long run. But there are things Sony can do now, like the suggestions above, to make PSVR 2 that much more palatable. A drop in prices would also help, but I don’t see that happening in the next few years.
