The Daily Populous Wednesday July 31st, 2024 morning edition
Authored by theshortcut.com and submitted by YouAreNotMeLiar

Seeing PSVR 2 sales skyrocket (Image credit: The Shortcut)

📈 Sony saw a 2,350% rise in PSVR 2 sales yesterday, based on our data

💰 The PSVR 2 price went from a steep $550 to $350 ($200 off)

🤷‍♂️ After 24 hours, PSVR 2 has completely sold out at Amazon

📆 It originally launched Feb 2, 2023. Sample data is from January 1 to now

🥽 Many PS5 gamers found it too expensive before and had few VR games

🔜 Aug 7: Sony plans to open up PSVR 2 to PC games with an adapter

The price of the Sony PSVR 2 was always too high, and further proving that widely-held theory, we saw sales of the PS5 VR headset suddenly skyrocket on Sunday.

The timing is no coincidence. Amazon had the PSVR 2 for $200 off and, according to the exclusive retailer data seen by The Shortcut, sales of the PSVR 2 skyrocketed by 2,350% over a 24-hour period. In fact, there were more PSVR 2 sales on Sunday than in the first seven months of 2024 combined. Amazon is now sold out, but we’re still seeing the VR headset in stock at Walmart.

See the $200 PSVR 2 deal (in stock)

Amazon's PSVR deal (may be out of stock)

Walmart and other US retailers followed suit with their own price drops after Best Buy (which was first) and Amazon (second) reduced the prices on Sunday morning. So the surge in PSVR 2 sales wasn’t limited to just Amazon.

What went wrong with the PSVR 2 (Image credit: The Shortcut)

The PSVR 2 launched on February 2, 2023, with a lot of promise. It had the potential to bring well-known PlayStation game IP to virtual reality when few other VR headset makers had established in-house franchises. Sure enough, Sony launched Horizon Call of the Mountain alongside the headset and over 30 PSVR 2 launch titles.

However, besides adding a VR mode to Gran Turismo 7, there haven’t been a lot of truly standout PSVR 2 games from Sony or third-party developers. Instead, we’ve seen a lot of ports straight from Meta Quest and, recently, VR games like Hitman 3 VR Reloaded skipping the PSVR 2 altogether. The one hope is that PSVR 2 will get PC support on August 7, opening up the VR headset to more games.

Where is God of War, Uncharted or Spider-Man in VR? These should be top PSVR 2 games.

Caught in a trap… I can’t walk out (Image credit: The Shortcut)

How PSVR 2 got caught in a downward spiral

The biggest setback for PSVR 2 has been the lack of first-party support. Where are God of War, Uncharted, and Spider-Man in VR? These should be top PSVR 2 games.

Instead, most of Sony’s budgets have been dedicated to the best PS5 games, and it makes sense if you’re a video game developer trying to appeal to the widest audience possible. The PS5 install base is much larger – Sony has sold nearly 60 million consoles, according to the company’s most recent earnings call.

What I keep hearing from developers in these cases: “Why make a game for a fraction of the audience?” In a chicken or egg scenario, gamers aren’t willing to invest in a VR headset that isn’t going to have a lot of games in the pipeline.

What I keep hearing from gamers I interview, meanwhile, is they feel as if they “just spent $500 on a PS5.” It was nearly impossible to buy Sony’s console due to the PS5 restock shortage in 2020 and 2021. Sony’s inventory woes have been coming back to haunt them. Add in the fact that it was cheaper to buy a PS5 console vs a PSVR 2 at launch by $50 (for PS5 Disc) to $150 (for PS5 Digital). PS5 Slim has an MSRP of $500 and is now on sale for $450, so another $550 has been seen as unfathomable.

The new $350 PSVR 2 price (Sony hasn’t confirmed if this price is sticking around) shows that there’s an appetite for VR gaming among PS5 console goers. But it can’t cost more than the PS5 console itself and there has to be software to play.

PS5 Pro is up next followed by PSP 2 from Sony

The bright spot is that we reported on how the PlayStation Portal is the top-selling gaming accessory of 2024 so far, even though there was PS Portal restock chaos that made it impossible to find in stock for its first six months.

With Sony due to announce a PS5 Pro console this fall (likely in September) and PSP 2 handheld in 2025, gamers I talked to hope that its launch-day pricing strategy is more like the $199 PlayStation Portal than the $550 PSVR 2.

angry_wombat on July 30th, 2024 at 20:06 UTC »

damn it was $550 that's crazy expensive, even for someone like me that loves VR. And you have to buy the games on top of it. No wonder why it wasn't selling.

Nyrin on July 30th, 2024 at 17:44 UTC »

Is there a name for the "law of immediate skepticism of relative numbers in situations where they're obviously masking a reality described by the absolute numbers?"

A drop from $550 to $350 on what was already a low-margin item — following a previously covered production pause with backed up inventory — is a pretty clear "fire sale" and fire sales are intended to cut losses and clear units.

It's great that it worked, but it's disingenuous (to say the least!) to represent this as some sort of renaissance. The best hope would be that this is a prelude to an updated model that's simultaneously better, cheaper, and backed by an updated content and compatibility plan, but...

fartingboobs on July 30th, 2024 at 17:17 UTC »

damn, 2000 units sold, that's crazy