The launch of PS VR2 was one of the most important moments for Sony so far in 2023, although it was accompanied by some controversy due to the lack of backward compatibility with PS VR1 games, and its high sale price. It is important to highlight, in this sense, that we are dealing with a virtual reality kit that costs more than the PS5 itself, since Its base price is 599 euros.
According to Bloomberg, PS VR2 sales until the end of March would be around 270,000 units, a figure that is obviously not good at all, and that according to analysts could end up leading this virtual reality kit to suffer a real bump. To avoid failure, Sony should reduce the selling price, according to Francisco Geronimo, an analyst and vice president of data and analytics at IDC.
The goal that Sony had set itself with PS VR2 was very ambitious. The company expected to sell 2 million units during the first post-launch quarter, but after seeing the first results that this virtual reality kit has achieved and its poor reception in the market the Japanese firm lowered its expectations to just one million units sold in that first quarter, and 1.5 million units sold between April 2023 and March 2024.
Earlier this month Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki said that PS VR2 is likely to outsell the original, which reached a total of five million units sold at the end of 2019, a figure that we can consider as a relative success considering the huge number of PS4 and PS4 Pro consoles that Sony sold. In total quantity, it was well received, but in proportion to the total number of consoles sold, it was not.
PS VR2 is a good virtual reality kit, and it has arrived on the market accompanied by titles that have allowed it to demonstrate its potential, but as the vice president of data and analytics at IDC says It comes at a difficult time because consumers have to face increasingly high costs of living, a situation that is also being aggravated by massive layoffs in large companies.
Both keys have generated a very difficult scenario that is notably limiting consumption and spending on technology, and in the end this has an even greater impact on the purchase of accessories and peripherals that are not really important, or that do not offer a great differential value, and the PS VR2 is a clear example.
