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Boomberg: Sony Hits Pause on PSVR2 Production as Unsold Inventory Piles Up

Killer8

Member
You make one of the very few OLED VR sets, pack it with better tech than alternatives costing twice as much, a simple and quick update would make it the only VR set connectable to a 3D Blu-Ray player now that 3D TVs are no longer produced and thousands of people lack official ways to watch their collection of 3D movies to the point a simple and basic head mounted display like Cinera amassed more a million dollar funding while costing twice as much as the PSVR2 for the ONLY reason of being able to read 3D BD (and turned out to be a scam in the first place).

GJGq8ly.jpg


You have press asking you to add 3D BD support, petitions begging you to add 3D BD support, you have millionaires on enthusiast home theatre forums claiming PSVR 2 would be the definitive way to watch 3D BD..

You decide a simple PS5 Update like PS3 and PS4 received to read 3D BD isn't worth it.

2zutki.jpg




You now lack sales because of no support and no backwards compatibility.. and you still refuse to open the gates to a niche of tens of thousands of people eager to purchase your product.

retard.gif

BD playback feels like an afterthought on PS ever since the PS4. The PS3 had better playback. It's just baffling how the UHD player in the PS5 still doesn't have Dolby Vision support, even as an optional extra you pay the license to use.
 

NeoGiffer

Member
Has anyone else had the idea of getting this solely for GTA VI?

Those chicks on the beach won't eat themselves. 🍑
 

PaintTinJr

Member
Friendly reminder that PSVR2 is still a huge success for Sony because its tech was essentially licensed for Vision Pro. Sony is the main vendor for all the vital tech there, including the eye tracking.
Yeah, and all that sensor tech goes in their sensors they sell to 80% of the smartphone and camera market and surveillance, and factory automation sensor market too, And that's even forgetting that lots of the tech originally was started as VR R&D military projects that began 20years or more ago..

I'm sure if they've shipped 1.5million and sold half at a small profit they've done fine in relation to the cross over of tech with so many other profitable divisions.
 

keefged4

Member
I had one for a week, finished GT7 and RE8 then returned it. I just couldn't justify the price I paid for what, 3-4 games? with the rest of the library just being the usual shovelware "experiences" available everywhere else.
 

StereoVsn

Gold Member
Shocking, lol. And people say Sony shouldn't release a $399 portable with way broader appeal and easy to port software, but thought this was a good idea instead? And I say that as someone who enjoys vr......
Sony can’t support PS5 with enough releases. They can’t have anything they would require ports.

Either the portable needs to play existing PS4 and PS5 games or it’s going to be DoA as well because Sony will drop software support after initial launch.
 
There’s a near zero chance of that happening so long as Gabe Newell is there.
In my opinion, Gabe Newell is part of the problem too. Just look at the Half Life situation, had Valve committed back then the fans (not the fanboys) would be at a way better place today; Videogame budgets are so massive today that it’s probably too late to take on the Half Life franchise. Again, this is my personal opinion.
 
The floundering relevance of VR as a platform nowadays meant Sony would have needed to do the literal opposite of how they released this thing:

- strong launch marketing
- BC, or at least port some of the bigger first party PSVR legacy titles and offer upgrade paths when/where possible
- Price less than the base console needed to power it
- A greater mix of first party titles/ VR conversions
- PC hardware AND software support at launch, even if that meant creating a bespoke launcher( and with that, millions of PC gamer voices suddenly cried out in terror)

EDIT: None of the above is meant to suggest that doing those things would have made PSVR2 a smash runaway success, but as far as hitting whatever their internal targets were, surely they cratered any chance of doing so with their launch strategy.

If none of those things were viable, a decision on whether this thing even justified itself on the market was required. Perhaps Sony looked at how popular Meta Quest 2 was during the lockdowns back in 2020/2021 and thought they could get a 2nd bite of the cherry ( and had probably pumped too many R&D resources into it by then), but the conditions for that spike were not only specific to that time period but also the nature of the Quest itself vs a tethered platform.
 
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This probably should have been pitched and created as a cross platform device from the start. The market is still just too niche for the walled garden approach imo.
Agree. VR needed kind of a 'rising tide lifts all vessels' approach. We see now with modern gaming that walling off content is less viable than past gens with rising development costs and stagnating hardware sales numbers. That would be even more the case for a subsection of the market multiple times smaller.
 

Astray

Member
He was wrong at the beginning but I think he's right this go-round.. PSVR2 units are filling up retails with no one touching it.

Very stupid not to have backcompat and pc support for the headset imo, and I say thus as a believer in VR.
 

XXL

Member
There is a list of things that are relevant concerns with how they they handled PSVR 2.

But, anyone referring to its weak software (specifically in 2023) for PSVR2 has no idea wtf they are talking about.

Some of the best games of 2023 (easily) were PSVR 2 games and I own every platform under the sun.
 

Mikey Jr.

Member
Yeah I knew Sony didn't give a fuck when we didn't even get fucking psvr1 ports.

Ohh well. I have a psvr2 and gt7 was fucking mind altering. Never experienced like that in my life.
 

omegasc

Member
that's too bad. It's a great piece of hardware. GT7 is amazing with it, and the few other games I tested are also pretty good.
Can't wait for the PC compatibility for more racing in VR :)
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Even with PC support, there’s no reason I’d buy it over a Meta Quest 2 or 3. At least those offer wireless play on an additional platform that doesn’t require a seperate $500 hardware purchase.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Sony posted a graph showing the first couple months’ sales vs PSVR1 to show that it was selling better, but the graphs looked like they’d cross in the next month or two and PSVR2 would drop behind.

I got laughed out of the PSVR2 thread when I pointed this out. Just wanted to say: I told you so.
Ok here’s the graph supposedly showing how PSVR2 was off to a better start than PSVR1. Notice the trajectory of the 2 graphs. AFAIK Sony never made another statement comparing the sales again after this.

psvr2.jpg
 

Dick Jones

Gold Member
Have we gotten any reporting not from Bloomberg? Taka is a known fabricator so when there is any other reporting not connected to Taka then it can be taken as news.

Also enjoying the Xbox shill use halting production of the PSVR2 as proof it's a failure while Xbox also stopped production on the current gen consoles. You didn't think this one through adamsapple adamsapple
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
Ok here’s the graph supposedly showing how PSVR2 was off to a better start than PSVR1. Notice the trajectory of the 2 graphs. AFAIK Sony never made another statement comparing the sales again after this.

psvr2.jpg

Sony is really smart to stop short at sharing the numbers beyond week 6 going by that trajectory.
 
Probably a few things at play. PSVR1 wasn't a great product, which might have turned some of those users off of VR all together rather than set them up to buy the new one. The price is way too high for a device designed to use with a $500 console. And the obvious lack of VR modes in PS first-party games combined with a dry release schedule for Sony anyway. You've got to wonder what the sales would have been if they just built the best inside-out tracking set they could on a $250 or $300 budget. FB can get the Quest 2 out the door at $250 and that has a standalone chipset and battery, etc. Making the thing more available and letting people know it is there would help also.
 

Thick Thighs Save Lives

NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
Don't really have any interest in picking up a PSVR2 (or any VR headset for that matter), but it's still sad to see the current the state of affairs.

And funny enough was checking the new PS5 listings that were added at a local game shop and was quite surprised to see that the most recent ones were all physical PSVR2 games.

t4oqLI8.png
 
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RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
I'd love to get into the mind of the people who are making the decisions around PSVR because to pretty much everyone that uses it there’s a million little things they could do that would massively improve the chances of its success, yet they sit there and do fuck all with it, as mentioned previously.. give the bloody thing proper 3D Blu-ray support, open it to the internet, make it PC compatible, throw valve some money and license Alyx, get some of your PSVR1 bangers out on it, i mean how hard and how expensive would it be to action these.. i honestly don’t know why they are sitting on their arse and letting this thing rot when its an incredible piece of tech, spent a few hours in Red Matter2 over the weekend and flatscreen games just dont come anywhere close to offering up the sort of Awe inspiring visuals that that game has in spades.. fucksakes Sony sort it out
 

aclar00

Member
Though I bit the bullet, my feeling from the onset was that Sony was going to let PSVR2 hang out and dry. The cost, given its limitations and library, was and is still ridiculous, particularly when it's not even stand-alone to any degree. Even if not on PC, they probably should have included some kind of processor to make it at least on par with PSVR1 when stand-alone given the price.

Unfortunately, we are again in the realm of arrogant Sony who is trying too hard to revive it's 1980s glory days. They're trying to become Apple overnight....and it's not working. They may need to go back and take hits on hardware and make it up in software, (not too GaaS heavy). But they want their cake and eat it too.

At this rate, if the PS5 and PSVR2 prices are sustained, then i wouldn't be surprised if PS5 doesnt maintain at least parity with PS4 lifetime sales.
 

Roxkis_ii

Member
As other have stated, I'll wait on another source to confirm the info in op, but I wouldn't be surprised. The lack of BC and new games to look forward to, plus the price is just a no go I my mind.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
I'd love to get into the mind of the people who are making the decisions around PSVR because to pretty much everyone that uses it there’s a million little things they could do that would massively improve the chances of its success, yet they sit there and do fuck all with it, as mentioned previously.. give the bloody thing proper 3D Blu-ray support, open it to the internet, make it PC compatible, throw valve some money and license Alyx, get some of your PSVR1 bangers out on it, i mean how hard and how expensive would it be to action these.. i honestly don’t know why they are sitting on their arse and letting this thing rot when its an incredible piece of tech, spent a few hours in Red Matter2 over the weekend and flatscreen games just dont come anywhere close to offering up the sort of Awe inspiring visuals that that game has in spades.. fucksakes Sony sort it out
I dunno, I think it’s mainly due to opportunity cost. Yeah Sony could do all those things, but how much investment do they really want to make in some niche peripheral that, even if they did everything right, would only have a small % of the total PS5 install base? They’re having a hard enough time releasing non-VR games, why spend money/developer time trying to resuscitate VR?

Honestly I think PSVR2 only got released because of the sunk costs. They thought “might as well release it and try to recoup some of our investment, who knows, maybe it’ll become a surprise hit”
 

avin

Member
Friendly reminder that PSVR2 is still a huge success for Sony because its tech was essentially licensed for Vision Pro.

Wouldn't the Vision Pro need to be a "huge success" for that to be true? But I'd guess even Apple can't train people to work with cell phones strapped on their face.

avin
 

hlm666

Member
Friendly reminder that PSVR2 is still a huge success for Sony because its tech was essentially licensed for Vision Pro. Sony is the main vendor for all the vital tech there, including the eye tracking.
What exactly did they use tobii for? There were articles leading up to psvr2 launch citing sony was using tobii for it's eye tracking.
 

mdkirby

Gold Member
Agree. VR needed kind of a 'rising tide lifts all vessels' approach. We see now with modern gaming that walling off content is less viable than past gens with rising development costs and stagnating hardware sales numbers. That would be even more the case for a subsection of the market multiple times smaller.
ya, same with software exclusivity. It's just a bad idea at the moment. Between the various platforms there actually a lot of great content, its just fragmented and in its own gardens, so each individual platform is somewhat lacking (for various reasons) as a result.
 
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