Summary
Sony has reportedly temporarily halted all production of thePlayStation VR2. The company’s purported decision to hit pause onPS VR2manufacturing is said to be a result of the headset’s lackluster sales, which caused an inventory buildup.
Sony’s latest virtual reality headset turned one on February 22. ThePS VR2 has reportedly been strugglingto make its mark on the market over the past year; despite being well-received by reviewers, the device debuted with a modest launch title lineup and a steep $549.99 price tag that made it more expensive than the PS5 that it requires to work. A year later, only a fraction of the PS5’s 54 million owners are believed to have bought the console’s VR accessory. Sony has yet to share anything in the way of concrete sales figures, suggesting that the PS VR2 is performing worse than its predecessor, which was confirmed to have hit a million sales seven months after its late 2016 release.
Sony Reportedly Has a Lot of Unsold PS VR2 Inventory
The headset’s commercial momentum, or lack thereof, is now said to have prompted Sony to pause all PS VR2 production. That’s according to a newreportfrom Bloomberg’s Takashi Mochizuki, which states the Japanese gaming giant has decided on this course of action after finding itself with a sizable PS VR2 inventory that it has yet to clear, citing people close to the company. According to IDC’s estimates, Sony has shipped over 2 million PS VR2 units to retailers since debuting its latest virtual reality headset. How many of those are now in consumers' hands is unclear.
Sony’s recent confirmation that it’slooking into the possibility of making the PS VR2 PC-compatibleappears to track with the claim that the headset hasn’t been doing too well, sales-wise. Allowing it to play PC games, something its predecessor was never able to do officially, would ostensibly expand its target audience pool. Another indicator that the company is rethinking its VR push emerged back in February, when Sony decided to close down its PlayStation London Studio, which has been exclusively focused on virtual reality titles since 2016.
The Japanese group has yet to reflect on Bloomberg’s latest report. While it’s generally not in the habit of commenting on rumors, it did make an exception for one of Mochizuki’s 2020 stories, when itdenied his claim that it cut the PS5 production numbersahead of the console’s release.
Something similar had occurred two and a half years later, whenSony refuted another one of Mochizuki’s reportsclaiming that it lowered the PS VR2 production target due to disappointing pre-order figures. Unofficial reports aside, Sony’s next obvious opportunity to offer an update on its virtual reality headset’s commercial performance is going to arrive in May. That’s when the company is expected to share its Q4 and full-year earnings for its fiscal year 2023.
PlayStation VR2
The successor to the PS VR, the PlayStation VR2 is Sony’s virtual reality headset. Debuting in February 2023, the hardware is designed as a companion piece for the PlayStation 5 and requires the PS VR2 Sense controller.
