Sony seems sure that PSVR 2 will sell more than the first one, but a lot of things will have to change for that to happen.
Hiroki Totoki, Sony’s chief financial officer, was optimistic about PSVR 2 outselling the first PlayStation VR headset when he spoke last week at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference (thanks, VGC).
At the event, Totoki said, “We are very happy to launch VR2 on PS5” “We sold more than five million VR1 units, and I think PlayStation VR2 has a good chance of beating that number.”
Even though the PS5 headset has great image quality and useful features like eye-tracking support, it doesn’t seem to be a big hit with console owners right away.
Reports say that pre-order sales for PSVR 2 were not very good, and the high price of $549/£529/AU$879 won’t help it in the near future. It’s an impressively high-end headset, but for the average consumer, the fact that it costs more than the PS5 itself is a bad sign.
Does PSVR 2 stand a chance?
PSVR 2 can only do well in my eyes if it does well. So far, I’ve loved using the headset, and playing the best PSVR 2 games has been a lot of fun. Between Horizon: Call of the Mountain’s immersive climbing and Gran Turismo 7’s breathtaking driving, playing games on PSVR 2 is just great.
And I know it’s still early; at the time I’m writing this, the headset isn’t even a month old. But right now, PSVR 2 is not in a good position to even come close to matching the impressive sales record of its predecessor.
If Sony really wants to start selling PSVR 2s, it will need more exclusive games than just Horizon. But the VR headset is limited in a lot of other ways. First of all, it’s not compatible with the first PSVR games, so if you want to play Resident Evil 7 or Astro Bot: Rescue Mission again, you’ll still need your old headset. As of now, we have to rely on developers to port their PSVR games to the new headset, which isn’t a sure thing.
I’d also love to see PSVR 2 games added to Sony’s PS Plus library. If players can pay a monthly fee to download VR games that aren’t available anywhere else, that will help their wallets, especially if they just spent a lot of money on a VR headset.
Again, I want to stress that we just don’t know how well PSVR 2 will do in the long run at this point. But Sony can do things right now, like the ones above, to make PSVR 2 a lot more appealing. A price drop would also be helpful, but I don’t think that will happen for at least two more years.