Sony As Meta struggles to get its metaverse off the ground, even with decent Quest sales, it will now face additional challenges with an old champion returning to the fray. In a previous generation of VR, Sony’s PlayStation VR was king, outselling Oculus at the time. Now, PSVR 2 is coming, although it remains to be seen if it can dominate the niche market again. PSVR 2 will arrive on February 22, 2023, according to a new announcement from Sony. And it will cost $550, $50 more than the pricier PS5 model, at least in the US. The original PSVR launched at $400 in 2016, and that’s due to some serious inflation, which doesn’t cover the full gap of the price increase, although the PSVR didn’t have controllers at the time. The PSVR 2 bundle includes the headset, Sense controllers, and stereo headset. And yes, PSVR 2 connects to your PS5 with a cable. That means more power, but also not a cable-free experience like Search. Of course, the $550 PSVR 2 is miles cheaper than Mark Zuckerberg’s just-announced $1,500 Meta Quest Pro , which is intended for ultra-hard VR fans and enterprise use. The Quest 3 is likely to be released next year, and the Quest 2 is currently $400, so a bit cheaper than what we’re seeing from Sony here. Sony also announced today 11 new titles coming to PSVR 2 at some point, almost all of which are VR exclusives, not VR ports or anything like that. I remain somewhat skeptical of Sony’s decision to continue devoting so many resources to VR. At least no, they’re not relying heavily on VR to be the Next Big Thing, like how Mark Zuckerberg has bet his entire reputation and company on the metaverse, but I wonder if hardware resources could be better spent on the revival , say, a mobile console. at a time when Switch and Steam Deck are extremely popular. But as a former VR market leader, I guess I understand why we got here for a sequel. I just hope they make a VR PlayStation Home at some point, and it ends up being a lot better than Meta’s Horizon Worlds, which seems like a pretty low bar. The VR market has continued to grow, but slowly, and remains a fractional part of the gaming landscape compared to console, PC, and mobile gaming. I expect the PSVR 2 to do pretty well, but the price is a tall order for many in this economy, and a luxury VR headset for a small handful of short games might not be worth it for many other than diehards. We’ll see how things go at launch and what Quest 3 can bring to the table in terms of competition next time. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to my free weekly content collection newsletter, God Rolls. Take my science fiction novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
