Sony PSVR 2 sales reportedly on the low side

Expert predicts a PSVR 2 price cut to avoid a complete flop
Sony PSVR 2 sales reportedly on the low side
Sony PSVR 2 sales reportedly on the low side /

Sony’s PlayStation VR 2 headset, which was released last month, is reportedly not selling well. A report by Bloomberg has said the PS5 headgear won’t even have sold 300,000 units by the end of March 2023. Previous reports stated that Sony had produced two million units to satisfy the predicted demand during the launch window – a goal it seems to fall very short of. Sony denied earlier reports that it slowed down production due to disappointing pre-order numbers.

Coming in at a steep price of $549.99, the PSVR 2 is a very impressive piece of tech, as our own PSVR 2 review states, but asks a high buy-in price while not offering a whole lot of games to play.

The best PSVR 2 games are no doubt entertaining and immersive, but there simply aren’t enough of them to justify the price Sony is asking for at the moment. A lackluster launch library of just 32 games is certainly a contributing factor to the reportedly low demand.

Naturally, you’ll need a PS5 to use the headset as well, driving the buy-in price even higher for anyone without the console already in possession. Measures like backwards compatibility to soften the blow are not there either, so people can’t even play their old PSVR games on the newer hardware. Some titles did get free upgrades to PSVR 2, at least.

Another factor that could have had an impact on the sales is the current rise of the costs of living – people simply have less disposable income to spend on their hobbies at the moment and stuff like VR headsets are likely the first luxury items one can postpone purchasing.

Games industry analyst Francisco Jeronimo stated that Sony will need to cut the PSVR 2’s price to avoid it becoming a commercial flop.


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Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg