I bought a PSVR2 during the launch, and I loved it. I even wrote about how incredible it is as a headset, and even today I’m pretty impressed with what it can do. But with the heavy investment it takes to jump in, you’d think Sony wouldn’t forget it existed.
Buying a PSVR2 when it first came out was a hefty entry price. Not only did you need to own a PS5 already, but the price tag on the PSVR2 was $549 (what was I thinking) and there was also a bundle box for $599 that included Horizon VR to download.
Luckily Sony finally started to listen two years later and has announced they are dropping the price to $349 for both the base headset and the Horizon bundle. Yes, the same bundle released two years ago is still on shelves today, and for the same price. For comparison sake, that means the entry price for PSVR2 has lowered from $950-$1000 to just over $700 if you avoid the PS5 Pro, no disc drive, and find a sale on PS5 Slim. Still a gut punch, but still.
But it leads me to believing this still isn’t enough. Sony recently announced they were halting production of the unit to clear out inventory, and as a fan of PSVR2 that’s basically the only news we’ve gotten in some time. Well unless you pay attention.
Recently PSVR2 got a new update that allowed games to patch in hand tracking, or develop for it outright. What does that mean? Well you can play games literally with your hands. Considering the new price point of the PSVR2, this is absolutely huge news, right? Do we get a blog post? A State of Play showing off new games with hand tracking? No?
No, the only reason I knew about it was because a smaller studio had updated their game, Waltz of The Wizard, and told us about it. The studio seemed pretty excited for it, and it was exciting as a fan of their game too. Fans been asking if other titles will soon see similar features adopted, or if future titles will use it too, and so far no answer. I mean Sony showed it off during SIGGRAPH Asia 2024, back in December, and didn’t say a word.
In fact the last time Sony even remotely directly mentions the PSVR2 before the current price drop was in a now deleted Blog post celebrating PlayStation’s 30 year anniversary, where Jim Ryan mentions the unit as an innovation. The most recent post is again another studio talking about their game, Dream of Another, which will have a VR addition.
Even in the most recent State of Play, another really popular game from the show, The Midnight Walk, announced last year it would have a PSVR2 addition, but in the most recent State of Play would you even know that?
In terms of games, if I’m counting correctly, PSVR2 only has 11 exclusive games that utilize the features of the headset. Only 3 of these games were made by first party studios, and they were all released the first year of the headset. Firewall Ultra flopped so hard it killed its developer, First Contact Entertainment, and studios behind PSVR hits like Blood & Truth got shuttered or downsized. No Astro Bot sequel, no Spider-Man VR, nothing to keep the momentum going.
If we want to include cross generation (games with a VR added mode) you can add one more first party game. In total there are 150 games to play, but all of them are available on cheaper headsets. It’s just honestly shocking that PlayStation hasn’t dove into this pool of games.
What’s also shocking is that we are 2 years into the headset’s release and we still can’t buy secondary controllers. I’ve had to pause games or outright not play my headset due to dead controllers, and being 2 years old the batteries are starting to age a bit. Can we replace them? No, not without getting a whole new headset from Sony.
2 years in and we don’t have backwards compatibility with PSVR1 titles. No new controllers or gadgets. Nothing from Sony beyond the headset itself. If it wasn’t for 3rd parties desperately trying to keep the unit alive and well, it’d be more dead than the PS Vita. But I guess it at least isn’t bleeding as much money as Concord. And it honestly makes no sense. With consoles getting pressure from new outlets like Steam Deck’s, PC’s, and streaming, wouldn’t another household unit be Sony’s main focus?
Instead Sony continues to get absolutely dominated in the market. The most recent estimates show Quest 3 had shipped around 1.5 million units in Q4, and by comparison Sony had only shipped just over 300k units of PSVR2. It’s getting so obnoxiously bad that studios are beginning to say they won’t even port games over due to the low numbers and high costs.
Honestly at this point it seems I only own a PSVR2 because I want to play Perp Games titles and don’t feel like buying a Quest.
But will Sony change it before it’s too late? It doesn’t appear that gear is in drive just yet. PSVR2 recently celebrated its two year anniversary on February 22nd and fans were excited that Sony would say something to celebrate. Instead we got a happy anniversary for Heavy Rain, and nothing until a week later announcing the price cut officially staying. The same price cut they announced in November last year.
But hey, at least Sony gave us an adapter so we can play the games we’ve been asking for on PC…. right?
