PlayStation’s second-gen VR headset is finally here – or, at least, we’ve finally been able to review it in detail.
It’s a screamer of a device, from our reviewer’s point of view, but one of the only major counterpoints being levied at it by us and other sources is a significant one.
There’s no getting around the fact that it costs more than the PlayStation 5 it needs to be connected to, a simple detail that will turn off countless normal consumers.
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There’s a core logic that falls down when you’re asked to spend more on an accessory than the console itself – even the DualSense Edge‘s cost feels steep, at nearly half a PS5, let alone this.
Of course, we’ve known the price for ages, but it’s been thrown back into sharp relief now that we’ve verified just how good the headset is, how carefully designed and considerately built.
This is hardware that deserves a wide audience, with a range of games that could be bigger but still holds some seriously impressive experiences – and we haven’t even been able to try Gran Turismo 7 or Resident Evil Village in VR yet.
Instead, even this writer will quite simply not be buying PSVR2. It’s too expensive, and that’s just the end of it.
When gamers who own custom controllers and had the PS5 on launch day are turned away by your pricing, that’s suggestive that it might have been misjudged.
Obviously, VR headsets are not cheap to create, especially when they’re as well-considered as PSVR2, but a profit margin will have been decided upon, and we worry that it’s eating up too much of this price.
Alternatively, the long gestation period probably meant expensive research and development costs that Sony might be trying to claw back.
Either way, if it were to go the same way as the first-generation PSVR, that would see this headset clear somewhere between five and 10 million units in the next five years (in the absence of official numbers for the last few years).
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On the surface that would seem a success, yet it might put PlayStation right back where it started – with a headset just popular enough to make ditching it a hard call, but nowhere near the mass uptake that would make it a true barnstormer.
This isn’t to say that we think PSVR2 won’t be a success – it’s got all the essentials covered and there are likely to be plenty of loyalists ready to pick it up. However, reports of cut-down production numbers have indicated that it might already be undercutting expectations, which doesn’t bode well.
Oculus’ Quest headsets correctly judged that wirelessness and price are still perhaps the two most important aspects of a genuinely attractive mass-market VR headset, and have reaped the rewards in huge sales numbers.
It’s surprising that PSVR2 has failed to match either element and while its single wire doesn’t seem a major hurdle compared to the complexity of the first PSVR, we’re just not sure that price is going to stand the test of time.
