Bloomberg’s Takashi Mochizuki has reported that production of the PlayStation VR2 headset has been put on hold as the company attempts to clear its inventory of unsold units, with over 2 million reportedly produced to date according to the outlet’s anonymous sources.
Shipments (not sales) of the PS VR2 have reportedly declined in the year since the PlayStation VR2 launched, from nearly 600,000 in Q1 2023 to around 325,000 in Q4 2023.
“The high price of VR hardware acts as the main hurdle for its expansion,” says Macquarie analyst Yijia Zhai as quoted in the Bloomberg piece. “Currently, there are limited games that support VR devices, and that will also lead to lack of motivation for players to purchase VR hardware. This limited content also has a reason – the development cost for VR games is substantially higher than normal titles.”
Sony has paused production of its PSVR2 headset until it clears a backlog of unsold units, adding to doubts about the appeal of virtual reality gadgets https://t.co/Z64OtpLJrY
— Bloomberg (@business) March 18, 2024
The news comes as PlayStation announced the closing of its London Studio last month as part of a wider round of layoffs, with the studio having been one of the more prolific first-party developers of content for the PlayStation VR1 and then moved over to working on a non-VR multiplayer title for PS5.
The news isn’t all bad with the VR market expected to grow on average 31.5% per year between 2023 and 2028, especially off the backs of devices like the Meta Quest 3 and Apple’s Vision Pro, and PlayStation also recently announcing that it’s working on PC support for the PlayStation VR2, which will open up a load of potential both in a vast new library for PS VR2 owners as well as the option of one of the most feature-complete and comfortable VR headset on the market for PC players.
We’re still big fans of the PS VR2 here, having said in our initial review, “The PlayStation VR2 is an astonishingly impressive bit of gear, combining exciting and innovative features with supreme comfort and usability and leveraging the power of the PlayStation 5 to provide an all-around fantastic VR experience.”
One of the bigger barriers to entry at the moment, across all VR headsets, is price, so it’ll be interesting to see if there’s any major discounting activity on the PS VR2 this year to give it some extra momentum.
