Sony Allegedly Pausing PSVR2 Production Due to Surplus of Unsold Stock

I really loved playing GT7 on this but it's been clear for quite some time this is dead in the water. Sales have been sluggish since the start and Sony's own lack of support hasn't helped. It's a cool piece of hardware and has some fun games but I've already sold mine.

Fun fact, Nintendo developed 4 games for it's Virtual Boy, so far Sony has made one for PSVR2

Astrobot 2 or something else out of Sony's stable would be classy at this point, but..

I've seen no good sales. I suspect people are waiting for a good bundle. I know I am.

Next week Takashi Mochizuki will be reporting the Sony has decreased and increased production of the ps5 pro and restarted production of the ps3

There isn't enough content to justify the price tag imo

Don't worry, according to certain people it was only a soft launch and the 'real' launch will happen around the holiday period.

And I've also been assured £530 is a 'steal' for the tech the headset has despite Quest 3 being far more advanced and is cheaper.

PSVR2 died the day Sony revealed the price, all you have to do is look at the comments on the official PS Blog post, whoever decided that price needs firing. You can buy a PS5 for £390 yet a peripheral is £530??

Just existing

Should have marketed it as a sleeping mask.

It’s not the price, it’s the lack of games other than arcade that holds PSVR2 back. Beside of Metro Awakening, there is nothing announced that could even only mildly interest me.

Firstly the price was always an issue. Charging more for a peripheral than for the system that runs it? Okay guys, if you’re sure…
Lack of backwards compatibility was the second hurdle. I’ve got loads of VR titles built up in my library from PS+ releases that I couldn’t play.
In fact thirdly, I’ve never played a VR title as it’s one of those things that I don’t know if I’m going to like or even be able to use at all. It’s a lot of money to gamble on a niche product.

1. Release a device that costs more than the console
2. Barely support it
3. ???
4. Profit

Something like that Sony must have thought when they made this thing

I sort of want to jump in but the cost is too high for me and the support is far worse than PSVR was at this point in its life. Plus, I feel that the Quest has cornered this market now.

Ok so this becomes simple economics - if you have too much supply you need to drum up demand via a few methods:

• reduce the price. Less price encourages more sales but less profit on each item, but can generate more profit overall by increased sales.
• make the product more appealing. In this case, add more software.
• make a complimentary product - i.e. the Microsoft/apple approach. Not sure this is an option.

So reduce the price or release more software and that will then cause demand to go up, reducing supply and then allow them to produce again.

You mean this whole VR thing is a gimmick and isn’t the future of gaming?

grabs box of popcorn ready to sit back and read all the comments

Maybe try at least porting psvr1 games you stupid suits

I'll say it again. PSVR2 remaster of Ace Combat 7. That game has the potential to look and run like a dream on that platform.

Was using the rifle and scope at the fish farm on Friday night. Really highlighted the weaknesses of the hardware, given how blurry and fuzzy it is compared to doing the same in Quest 3.

Also, so narrow is the sweet spot, I had to run the headband far tighter as you can’t afford it to move 1mm. Increasing discomfort and fatigue.

Bad design and bad choice by Sony.

That ain’t why it isn’t selling though, as people who aren’t buying it don’t know or understand any of that.

As Pirlega says, heaven and earth needed to be moved with PSVR1 patches.Skyrim Skyrim Skyrim. Blank cheque to Bethesda.

VR ever becoming mainstream is a pipedream. It'll always be niche and as such its difficult to make the required profits. Not surprised by this news at all.

I'm utterly shocked!!! I mean an un-supported, more expensive than the console peripheral, with games nobody cares about, not forgetting also when they released it, half the players were still struggling to get a ps5 at a somewhat reasonable price.
50% sale to move your stock and leave it fade it away, get to work on a vita2, psportal gonna be a failure too...

I think three things are hitting the PSVR2:
1.) Lack of 1st party games
2.) The fact it's still tethered to the PlayStation instead of being wireless
3.) The Mets Quest 2 is $300 less and the Quest 3 is $50 less. Both have giant libraries of games and apps they are also both completely wireless

Sony did a nintendo with this gimmick

@havoc33
20 million VR headsets were sold just last year and Meta Quest was 18 million of them. That's a pretty impressive number for a niche product

@GoingTheDist You'd think with those kind of numbers, Meta wouldn't still be losing billions on VR but somehow they still lost $4.65 billion on it last quarter.

Not here to defend PSVR2. But as rule it’s safe to stop reading when you see the words “Bloomberg journalist Takashi Mochizuki”.

Bloomberg is highly respected in some industries. Blows my mind that they continue to let their tech reporting to be a joke.

This Takeshi guy definitely can't be trusted, he just recently misquoted Sony again to make a more dramatic headline from that investors meeting and there's a history of Sony correcting him but honestly this wouldn't suprise me if it was true.

Demand is obviously low and there's no point in having a surplus, hopefully Behemoth & that Metro game can drum up a bit of interest and if it is actually going to PC then hopefully it takes off on there, although that could just be streaming PCVR games to the headset for PlayStation users from the vague statement they made.

It's a real shame that PSVR2 has been let down the way it has. The hardware is excellent and offers plenty of functionality not found on the Quest headsets, and the actual game library is sizeable and offers quite a few hidden gems so the "lack of games" complaint doesn't really hold up.

The real issue has been that Sony haven't done enough to really push those games or demonstrate why a game or series non-VR players have never heard of is worth a look. More crucially, the potential for some excellent, system-selling first-party games really hasn't been realised; games take time to make these days but Sony's talk of making VR development easier alongside traditional flat games doesn't appear to have resulted in much yet.

There's still plenty of good games available for it and more on the way but I was hoping that, after owning one for over a year, I'd have more PS-specific stuff to look forward to.

@MomsSpaghetti Having played a bit of both, as good as they neither of them really capture the "magic" of VR in the same way that, say, Red Matter 1 and 2 do which are designed entirely as VR experiences.

My best friend got psvr day one as he’s a big VR enthusiast. It is awesome to play, rez hd, Tetris, horizon and GT. But that’s about it.

At the time it came out I said that if Sony were to put something like an exclusive kill zone, motorstorm or something like an exclusive RE 1 remake (the mansion with VR it would be awesome) it would make me jump in.

But there’s no real games for it never mind any epic exclusives experiences. Sadly they just don’t seem to care about it. That coupled with the high high price and it’s just a big no.

@SgtTruth The lenses and the discomfort are why a lot of people buy this then abandon it though, so even though the sales are extremely poor, the retention is just as bad.

You can buy the Globular Cluster mod to help with comfort but like you said, bad lenses and standard comfort.

@MrHabushi The hardware is anything but excellent. Apart from the eye tracking, everything else is already dated especially considering PSVR2 was meant to have a 7 year life span.

If there really is such a surplus, could I buy two spare controllers please Sony????

I mean, a year on and the fact you still can’t buy a separate PSVR2 controller is crazy

@TrickyDicky99 Exactly. Most people just wanna chill while gaming and as such VR is just not it. And with game development being so expensive these days it's not going to encourage game development solely for the device.

Looks like Meta have won the war with the Metaquest. Those of us who made a day one purchase and then found there was hardly any software in the pipeline will feel shafted. But then, it was the same with the handhelds too, wasn't it?

The story of Sony and VR ends here basically, because none of us are going to be suckered for a third time.

Another market Sony has lost me on.

I know Sony would never do this, but wouldn't it be smart to allow ps5 vr gaming with other VR goggles. Sony would improve software sales, which is the actual money maker in the long run. Devs can adapt for things as the lack of eye tracking and foveat rendering (which isn't as big a deal as Sony is making it out to be). I'm sure many people would enjoy this and forgoing the hassle of pcvr gaming setups.

Develop Death Stranding 2 in VR and I'll buy one.

@havoc33 What I loved about PSVR1 was to be able to chill in a comfy chair and play the games with a pad, the transition to full motion controls just isn't for me.

I wish more flat games could be played in VR with a pad, leave the game as it is( 3rd person, controls the same etc)

The tech is fine but they haven’t supported it. It’s been about as well marketed as the Xbox Series X/S. It is one of the reasons that PlayStation profit margins are so tight.

They have become increasingly obsessed with hardware and are not learning lessons. The PS5 Pro will lose them money as well.

They just don’t seem to understand that the games are always what brings success.

They need to drop the obsession with hardware because it they don’t, it won’t just be Xbox who are 3rd party only publishers soon.

@Shepherd_Tallon Turns out this guy did it with Nintendo too and they ended up making a specific investor relations Twitter account as what he reported was so far from the truth and would have caused actual series damage with shareholders.

Several times.

Wouldn’t surprise me but, at the same time, this guy seems to have made it his life’s work to gain infamy through lying, and most recently about PSVR2, to the point his factual errors have had to be directly corrected in the past (as alluded to in the article to be fair). It’s well known.

@TrickyDicky99 Disagree, I think it's very good. Agreed the lenses are a shortcoming but comfort and adjustment is good and the controllers are excellent, the triggers in particular make using weapons in VR feel really immersive.

VR is still just a gimmick…. Don’t be surprise if we don’t see a PSVR3 for another 10 years

@havoc33 The Wii's USP was that it got people up and moving around instead of slumped on a sofa and it was a massive success as a result. VR's main barrier is ultimately that you need to have experienced it yourself to "get" it and see what it feels like.

@MrHabushi What headsets are you comparing it to?

Sure, if you are comparing it to the like of PSVR1, Quest 1/2, Valve Index, Reverb G2 etc, basically anything quite old then it's an improvement.

But compared to anything that's come out recently or due to come out in the near future, it's bottom of the pile.

@MomsSpaghetti @Shepherd_Tallon Couldn’t agree more. I genuinely find the lust some people have for wanting this to fail kind of fascinating . I am not by any means a VR expert, but a quick look at some respected VR YouTube channels (even those that aren’t so kind to Sony as a company) and they almost unanimously agree that the PSVR2 is an excellent headset.

If this is true, then a limited time offer would seem to be the way to go. Make people feel they’re getting a deal, get the thing on peoples heads. But I really don’t think the quality of the headset or the games on offer is the issue.

It’s a hard sell for sure. In the short time I’ve had with mine I’ve shown it to people who I thought would love it and have hated it, and vice versa who have since gone out and purchased one themselves… with that being said, maybe demo booths in video-game stores would be a good idea, because a lot of people really don’t know if it’s for them until they actually try it for themselves, and it is too pricey to just take a gamble.

I’m a pretty big fan of VR. I’ve owned a few PS VR‘s and oculus quests.

It likely wasn’t possible but they should’ve either skipped the PS five generation, or released it at a later date.

It was just really bad luck that the PS VR two released pretty much when the PS five really became available due to Covid and scalpers.

It’s crazy that the PS VR two‘s biggest competitor was the PlayStation five itself.

Just an FYI my typing looks a little weird because I did this by voice.

Some people got overexcited when the PSVR2 sold out. But it only meant they didn't have enough stock, possibly because they didn't believe in it. That was actually the PSVitaR2

@NieR_Dark I think a lot of those VR Youtubers were caught up in the hype at the time because a lot of them have since changed their tune.

Just see what John Linneman from Digital Foundry said about PSVR2 in their podcast last week, he said his views have changed completely since his PSVR2 review

@TrickyDicky99 I'm comparing it to what was available when it was released over a year ago, as did the many reviews which were largely very positive about it. I'd hope anything since would be an improvement given how quickly the VR hardware market moves at the moment, but even newer headsets are launching without features the PSVR2 has. I'd rather have adaptive triggers and eye tracking which are genuinely useful in gaming than some fancy mixed reality stuff.

Time to let it go, Sony. Just like 3D, it's an old fad that people try to revive every so often, but the excitement soon wears off, it doesn't sell, support dries up, and it's unceremoniously dumped. The tech improves, but at the end of the day, it's just not something that enough people want. They should have left it after the original sold worse than the Vita.

@liathach I don't think there ever was a war, well only in Meta users minds because Sony obviously see's the massive investment and billions of dollars Meta constantly loses on VR. I personally think the plan was to sit back a bit and hope Meta makes VR a must have and then they'd benefit from that but they aren't benefiting enough from it which makes getting 3rd party support more difficult and makes it harder to justify big investments for 1st party games for it..

@Shepherd_Tallon Yeah hopefully Sony sticks it out and the library grows slowly but surely, at least enough to get enough people interested in buying one and it's best to take everything this Bloomberg guy says with a pinch of salt because he's proven himself to be unreliable.

@MomsSpaghetti Yeah you're best off not giving those naysayers much attention, especially that one guy, he never misses an opportunity to try and ***** on PSVR2 while praising Meta. It is all he ever seems to talk about.

@TrickyDicky99 Yeah, I’m not trying to say it’s across the board raves, but I see a lot of them (not including those that solely cover PSVR2) in their yearly review (Gamertag VR, Beardo Benjo etc) still talking really positively about the headset, and all seem to think there’s a lot of life in it yet. Admittedly I’m very new to the VR world / community so if these are not good examples then I apologise in advance 😂

Regardless, I’m having a great time with mine. Which is all I can really judge it on. But yeah, it’s not perfect by any means.

For me it's not necessarily a "lack of games", but a lack of killer apps - it's sooo bad there is no first party games beyond Horizon.
Its like they learnt nothing from the Vita.

I also think the damage is done now - there's a reputation of no exclusives and that will continue to hurt the platform

@MrHabushi As I said, eye tracked foveated rendering is it's greatest strength, everything else is dated/done before. For a headset with a forecast 7 year life span they should of made alternative decisions when it came to the lenses, resolution and form factor.

The adaptive triggers are just pulled from the PS5 controllers, it's nothing fancy once you see a breakdown on the controller.

@MrMagic Meta loss is cause they continue to just dump endless money into R&D and other pointless ventures. I mean… We’ve seen how many endless prototypes they make of their VR HMDs. If they just released a product and supported. They wouldn’t be losing so much money… But here we are 6 months after the Quest 3 launch and already talking about the Quest lite and Quest Pro 2.

@MrHabushi yet it was a novelty that quickly wore off. Does anyone really want Nintendo to produce another console with motion controls as the main focal point? I don't think so. To this day Skyward Sword is the only Zelda game I've yet to finish and that was due to the controls.

@NieR_Dark Their channels depend on people being excited about VR. With that being said, people like MRTV (who has literally tried every VR headset available) again has changed his tune about PSVR2.

You should trust more the tech channels that cover other tech too and don't need VR to be popular to get clicks.

PSVR2's major weaknesses are the lenses, resolution/pentile pixel display and form factor.

For the tech you get, PSVR2 should really be a £300 headset.

Sorry but the headset is terrible,I don't even know why they are putting it on pc when theres already a better headset (quest 3) for pcvr

@AverageGamer I know that their operating cost is the reason why they are constantly losing billions, it seems their plan is to saturate the PCVR market as much as possible and that's why they don't care how much they lose to make it happen.

An expected failure given the fact that Sony put a massive price tag on a headset that cost almost as much as the console itself.

@NeonPizza Which is why I don't get it when people say the hardware is amazing, especially for £530.

Either this is their 1st and only VR headset or they are comparing it to very old headsets.

@MrMagic
That's because they are not simply resting on their accomplishments they are reinvesting in new research and development, and new big 1st party games. Remember they still have Grand Theft Auto San Andreas coming out

I think people can stop defending this now and admit it's been a failure, I suspect a heavy permanent price drop coming this year and maybe some PS5 Bundles with the Headset at a cheap price to shift stock and hope to gain losses from software sales.

The next time Sony want to invest in something niche that they now know wont sell gangbusters then I hope they make a steam deck type handheld that plays PS5/PS6 games natively over making the PSVR3.

PSVR2 is enticing, but it's price is just too high for a VR noob like me to "give it a try".

@NeonPizza They don't even need to be pancake lenses, fresnel lenses can have a larger sweet spot than the ones on PSVR2, the PSVR2 sweet spot is small compared to other fresnel headsets.

Sony please run a discount campaign with 20% off or so and I will gladly buy one despite the lack of software. Otherwise proper killer apps are needed (games but also support from media apps).

PSVR2 : Vita says 'hi!'

@NeonPizza It’s a product for enthusiasts. If you are heavy into gaming and having a middle-class income, 500 quids are not too much if you conpare what people spend on new iPhones.

But hardware without enough appealing software feels like a waste of money.

I'm waiting on that PC compatibility, if that works out well I'll buy one on sale.

I don't trust this source, he's been wrong multiple times and has a clear bias against Sony.

Poor old PSVR2, it really is a great bit of kit and does a fantastic job.

I think it's a good idea to make it PC compatible, but they need to drop it to £300 to get people buying IMHO.
Plus bundle it with a couple of games, maybe Pistol Whip and Resi 4.

If I didn’t get so motion sick, I would 100% be on board for any and all VR platforms lol

@GoingTheDist And yet, Reality Labs division of Meta posts 3 billion loss every quarter...

@Godot25
Just like Microsoft with the Xbox, they can afford the losses while they are getting everything in place to change the way we game

I actually use my PSVR2 headset most days, so getting value from it. I also have a backlog of games. So games are there and we do have some good games to look forward to. We do however need Sony to confirm more first party games, like AstroBot.

Even Quest 2 sold only a million units. Sony should invest more in the development of the base console. It's more efficient to attract PC users.

@Skyfall Quest 2 sold around 20 million.

Only 18 million off though, close!

@AndyKazama they are waiting for good games

I know a heck of a lot of gamers and not a single one owns it.

VR just doesn't cut it for gaming, in the end gamers prefer playing in big tv or pc monitor. I tried psvr1 once, it's cool but after 1 week I sold it again since I prefer playing normally on tv.

A couple of my friends also tried my psvr1, the effect varied, from just slight dizziness for my one friend, and nearly throwing up for my other friend 😅

Well, they really dropped the marketing ball on this. And Games have been slow to release. Hopefully PC support will help.

The PSVR2 is more expensive than the actual console, and the Meta Quest 3 is cheaper and has more features. How didn’t Sony thought of this? Even making the headset compatible with PC, it won’t change a thing.

@NeonPizza Here the same. RE8 and Moss Collection were both great, and I’m still waiting with RE4 (never played the remake) because I‘m afraid that there is no good supply following in the next couple of months. GT7 is great, too, but unfortunately not very „progress-driven“.
Sony, where is Astrobot Remaster? Where are VR remasters for Knack 1+2 and Sackboy?

I was interested but the price and the fact Sony basically pulled support after making one game for it has turned me off completely. The Virtual Boy, 32X and PS Vita had way (wayyyy) more first party support then the PSVR2 will ever have!

I had the psvr1 but getting burned with the lack of backwards compatibilty and the price made me choose the quest 3. After seeing the way Sony has treated psvr2, I have no regrets. I doubt they make a psvr3.

VR2 was worth it alone just for the RE experience. It won't be the same playing RE9 or RE5R in the flat mode.

Bought one at lauch, impressive tech but horrific lack of support from Sony who seem to be just letting it slowly die.

What really makes me think it's doomed, is the fact that even after all this time, there is still no word on things like Youtube or Minecraft support - things you would have just taken for granted would release upgrades to support it.
If they have decided sales are so bad that it's not worth wasting resources on it, what are the chances of anybody investing any serious money making big budget games on it?

@Shrek_Realista
They will never remake Resident Evil 5. Even when it originally game out the game was seen as racist and a bit of problem, in today's culture it wouldn't make it to the finish line

@GoingTheDist Unless you realise that Xbox is pretty fine. They are for sure not posting 3 billion loss every quarter.

@Godot25
Meta as a whole made $40 billion in profit last quarter, so I think they are just fine.

I figured this would end up being a bust. Sony's home consoles tend to go hard, but they have a terrible track record when it comes to supporting peripheral devices, which is a problem for an expensive device like this.

Right now, Capcom is the only company making the prospect of buying one even slightly tempting.

PSVR2 has its issues, but this guy kinda reports nonsense about it, then every gaming publication repeats it as fact. Where's the clearance sale? Where's even the slightest discount or new bundle? Warehousing unused inventory costs money.

I really like my VR2 even if I don't use it a lot.
While I have to agree the 1st party output specifically is underwhelming, I see a lot of posts and articles that make it seem like there's nothing to play on it, which is simply not true - unless you want VR to be your main gaming platform, in which case you should probably get a Quest instead.

Isn't this the guy who gets corrected by Sony a lot and is usually wrong, or rather just makes stuff up?
There is some unknown about the state of PSVR2, but this is just someone's random guess going from history, and he's not even good at guessing.

This thing was doa, most people who already spent $500 on a ps5 won't spend an additional $550 for a gimmick like this

Such a shame.
At £299, with back-compat this could have been a killer.
Heart goes out to all those who helped bring it to market.

tbh even if this is nothing but false rumour it is about as dead as they come - its only the imminent death rumours that give it any airtime these days - and that aint good.

@GoingTheDist Yep but it is still propped up by Facebook. Loads of other companies would have been bankrupt 10 times over but Zuckerberg is willing to take huge losses. I also wonder how many of the PC crowd just buy it for xxx and a believe that it'll eventually lead to them having a virtual girlfriend.

1. Drop the price
2. Build a team to port PSVR1 games
3. Pay Capcom to port RE7 and make RE2 and 3 VR.
4. Just get your wallet out in general to any studio that hints at VR development.
5. Pay Valve for the Half Life Alyx port we all assumed you were trying to get.

Make some games idiots.

Maybe people would be buying it if you f-ing supported the damg thing even a little bit! There have been exactly TWO big games for it since launch and both came from Capcom. Absolutely ridiculous.

This guy seems to make a living lying about the gaming industry. I can't figure out what his angle is, but it's not just VR, he seems to be actively trying to use yellow journalism to smear the entire console industry. I'm guessing he's in the palm of the mobile market or something. There's got to be someone greasing his palm to do it because there's no value in being a journalist known for false stories all the time, especially in business journalism.

That having been said, it's obvious VR2 is a business problem regardless. It's another symptom of Jim Ryan's era at Sony. We all remember back at PS5 launch when he had comments that basically confirmed they had no intention of doing a VR2, and then like 2 days later Sony Japan released images of the PSVR2 prototype like a retaliation against those comments like there was a hidden war between the divisions whether they'd release it or not? Then they launched it when console sales were still low, at a very high price point, just before Meta, the market leader undercut them, decided to take the very weird release approach of direct sales only without even stating clearly it would be available at retail later as they did for the Edge controller, barely promoted or advertised it, released all of two games, then assigned the studios that could make games for it to GaaS initiative, and then eventually shut them down. How was this going to succeed if the guy in charge actively tried to sabotage it since before it was even announced?

VR in general has a business issue. It's a niche product, that needs to sell by word of mouth and the priority has to be getting units out there in the hands of the masses. People say it needs blockbuster recognizable games, but the problem is that the hardware market is too small to justify spending that kind of money on games, and in all reality, blockbuster flat game franchises likely translate poorly to a VR experience anyway, often feeling like a 2D game but with 3D scenery rather than a real VR experience.

The problem with the people here priasing quest are all people running quest on high end PCs. Of course it's better. Try using only the built in tablet. Gfx suck compared to what PS5 can do with a VR2. But the problem then is most games are made with Quest as the lead platform because it's basically all of VR, so the graphics on most VR games just flat out suck because they're made for the Quest2/3 tablet instead of console (or PC.) And because Sony failed to move units with their absurd pricing and lack of marketing/1st party (and the good third party stuff goes to quest), nobody targets the platform.

Quest 3 has better lenses but worse gfx unless you're putting it on a powerful PC. PSVR2 has better processing but too few games make use of it because they design around Quest. You can have it all on some other VR platforms but they cost even more and are expensive toys for rich boys.

I don't know where VR goes from here. I doubt there will be another VR headset from Sony at this point especially with Jim having crippled their core business in flat games for the foreseeable future. PSVR2 fans will have to bite the bullet, buy a Quest, and create a Meta account (gag)

But all that having been said, PSVR2 is an overpriced but good product. I've got more than my money's worth. There's tons of great games. You've never heard of the franchises, the devs are indies, but the games are great. Heck, it's worth it just for Walkabout Minigolf and NMS, let alone Legendary Tales (Diablo Souls IRL!) , GT7. Lots of good stuff, but nothing that brings in someone that doesn't already have one. Too many people complain about comfort, which I don't get. Yeah ,the sweet spot isn't ideal but it's not THAT bad once you get used to how to find it, but that's very head dependent of course. Some people find Audeze headphones comfortable which I find way less comfortable than a PSVR2.

It's a good product with some limitations, for a niche market, at the wrong price, backed by a company, namely through it's leader, that seemed intent on proving it a failure so they could move on with their live service dream future before that crumbled from under them, too, and now the company needs to ignore it to focus on rebuilding it's broken core business instead.

I still like and use my VR2 regularly. That said, my only debate for 2024 is buy a Quest 3 or wait to see if the Xbox "Deck" type handheld rumor is real. If Sony wants hardware money from me this year, tell me PS5 Pro will focus on VR improvement. Otherwise no thanks, I don't need a new console for better FF7R performance.

Bones McCoy:

"It's dead, Jim."

Just blows my mind how badly Sony screwed this up. All they had to do was ensure the PSVR1's best titles were somehow ported over with a resolution boost. Even having PSVR1 level of functionality but with better graphics would've been better than not being able to play those games at all. For me, that was a real dealbreaker, esp as someone who bought and supported the PSVR1 and grew to love many of its games that I could no longer play on PSVR2 without keeping TWO consoles and TWO VR headsets around along with the PSVR1's miles of thick cables...And then the lack of first-party titles...where is Astrobot 2? Where is Blood & Truth 2?

@havoc33 I'm not suggesting Nintendo should do it again, I'm merely demonstrating that sitting on a sofa is not the only popular way to engage in gaming. The Quest's relative popularity shows there is a market for VR out there.

I think for the price you're simply not getting enough, although that comparison is largely due to the MQ3 which isn't flying off shelves either.

That being said it, what it does well, it does well but its held back by hardware limitations (PS5 isn't powerful for max res of the headset) and awful lenses which is my biggest gripe as after having to reuse my psvr1 headset even that has better lenses. The wire for me is a non issue as it means I don't need to care for a battery, and I'm yet to trip on it.

@GoingTheDist Who said that? IGN? Lmao

@GoingTheDist But I'm talking about Xbox division vs. Reality labs division. But okay...

@Rudy_Manchego that isn't true,look at @withoutparoles video a few weeks ago comparing year one psvr with year one psvr2 and psvr2 massacred it.This can't be made up game releases are there to see

@NEStalgia I think some proper marketing could help a lot. Making the launch only the for the hardcore willing to buy from Sony direct no extra warranty was an awful idea. They got rid of free marketing from stores and them hyping it up wanting pre-orders.
but what if it sold out? GOOD! You think making sure the "loyals" get one in the first 3 months will be better by any real metric in the long term?
I think a price drop with some new games could do a lot as long we get support from Sony like the PSVR1 did.
I did find a VR market study that more or less said Sony sold about 2M so far and it was holding a 35% VR market share consistently outside when the Q3 launched.

Stupidly expensive and wired....
Yet someone at Sony thought it was a good idea.

I bought PSVR1 and I'm looking at it righr now, worst gaming hardware I've ever bought.

@MrMagic They’re plans has literally nothing to do with the PC market at all. Like what!?!? Hahaha. PC players account for probably less than 5 million of the 25 million Quest users. Their plan is for VR to be the next PC or smartphone, replacing those devices. Their barely minimum PC support is just a byproduct of their legacy devices/software.

Everyone is saying lack of games but I'm buying new games all the time and most of them kick ass. I can max out my storage with psvr2 games. Oh well enjoy the drama I'm going to keep enjoying myself.

@Jaz007 Seriously! I'm usually the first to trash obscene levels of spending on marketing, especially where Sony is concerned where I think they spend 60% of their game budgets on marketing campaigns, but in VR2's case, it certainly needed something more than an Ozzy Osbourne commercial in one region. Even Vita got a MUCH more hyped launch.

To a degree I suspect the direct only thing was because of the PS5 scalping issues to make sure it didn't become the retail cluster-f that the PS5 launch did with US Walmart opening preorders a day early and the chaos that ensued. But there was also more to it. Edge and VR2 were on direct-only preorder at the same time. But Edge clearly stated that it will go to retail it either said "one month" or "shortly after" so retail customers knew they could wait. VR2 said no such thing and nobody knew if it was direct-only forever or what. The whole launch signaled a cautious, lack of confidence release.

A price drop is REALLY sorely necessary. Their closest biggest rival with more exclusives and the market share to match is undercutting them by $50. That's not just sad, that's OG Kinekt-mandatory X1 weaker box for more money than PS4 level self destructive. And even VR1 only really took off after they made it the big bargain for Black Friday in 2017.

At 2M for VR2, if Sony has a 35% VR market share that must mean there's a lot of VR1's still out there in use? It sounds like it's a number better on paper than reality. It's all really sad though, because the PS5+VR has such an opportunity to be THE go-to VR environment. Fraction of the cost of PCVR, way more graphics grunt than tablet-in-a-headset units. But they can't seem to figure out how to actually make people what to buy one and aren't fussed with trying. They just put them out there hoping they sell themselves.

I do think a lot sits on Jim's direction of SIE though. He didn't have time or patience for new markets, niches or peripherals, the hardware department seemed to make the product in a vacuum and he couldn't be bothered to assign any SIE resources into software or marketing support for it because he was throwing them all into the GaaS meat grinder and shutting down the smaller studios. What is Asobi even doing? 3.5 years since they released a tech demo a few years after a smallish VR platformer, their games aren't exactly Horizon in scale. But nothing VR. Heck they're probably a support studio for the GaaS games now. Even PS5 itself is kind of starving for first party content let alone VR2, it's just that they've plugged the hole by buying 3rd party content.....kind of like Meta does.....for VR.....Maybe they can open up that checkbook to buy a thing or two before Meta does? Give it Sony marketing magic like Moss, where most think it's a Sony game just because it was marketed so heavily by them. It really can't cost that much relative to producing content.

Maybe ND can remaster some of their remasters for VR lol. Or, IDK, they could go really creative and have BP make a VR mode for Demon's Souls. I don't even like Demon's souls and I'd pay $70 launch day for VR 1:1 Demon's Souls. That would have to be a smallish project for them, the game already lends itself to it, it would be mostly a control revamp. Enthusiasts would scream from the mountaintops about it. It'd be way easier than trying to make some GoW thing. The game's controls are PS3 era, simpler for basic walking movement.

@AverageGamer Well it seems it suffers from the same problem as PSVR2, for most after the initial hype wears off it becomes a dust collector so they'll have to overcome their retention problems first, so good luck with that pipe dream I guess.

https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-sales-20-million-retention-struggles/amp/

It’s weird how they totally missed the projections on this and PS Portal. Way overproduced VR2 and are underproducing Portal such that it sells out within a few hours everytime they drop a supply.

@NEStalgia this is quarterly market share for PSVR2, so no PSVR1.
Here’s where I saw it. I haven’t looked deep into its reliability, but trust it more than Bloomberg’s guy. (Faint praise, I know.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/1bemj0c/psvr2_market_share_by_quarter_units_sold_psvr2/

I agree about Jim Ryan, I think he knows how to boost some profit short term, but he doesn’t think out of the box enough for the long term.
Sony got where it is now by taking creative risks and building up exclusives very well.
I think the direct only thing is a good example too. It was a shortsighted decision that doesn’t take into account any ways to actually solve the problems (PS4 has no issues when pre-orders launched). It just moved it away from risk of that one problem without considering what was sacrificed in the process. Very short-term reactionary thinking.

Makes sense to me. It's not selling that well, they have a huge surplus of stock, why continue producing more just to sit in warehouses?

Bloomberg has proven over and over again they can't be taken seriously

They owe a lot of refunds

@NEStalgia Didn't they make it where you don't need a Facebook account to use a Quest headset? Or is that distinct from a "Meta" account?

Also:

"That said, my only debate for 2024 is buy a Quest 3 or wait to see if the Xbox "Deck" type handheld rumor is real."

Why not just buy a Steam Deck OLED, in that case? PC games can still be had very cheaply in bundles and sales on various third-party websites, and the hardware is just amazing and well-designed. It's almost totally supplanted my Switch for games that aren't exclusive or sans PC (this is pretty much just Vanillaware at this point) or Steam versions. The software environment almost makes it feel like playing on a console with PC-level freedom of control/performance/graphics optimization.

@MrMagic Retention will fix it self if they released a steady release of games, but they don’t cause they’re too focused on putting out further HMDs, and they only started buying studios like 2 years ago.They don’t have 20 game studios, including literally one of best VR devs in world, being wasted on marvel licenses.

these companies are selfish and all in it for themeselves. they don't seem to realize that to push vr tech, they also need to push their software to every vr platform in order to entice customers. yes, they need to support eachother for this vr space to thrive which will be beneficial to everyone involved.

the vr space is only 10 years old, but the market is confusing and saturated. why hasn't valve ported half life alyx to psvr2 yet? why hasn't sony ported horizon and gt 7 to steam vr? the technology is not going to flourish until people are impressed with the software library and that will not happen until all the vr developers and publishers become more transparent and open with the devices they support. exclusivity is not going to work for vr in the same way it does with consoles since the user base is so small. if they keep this up they will have no choice but to shut down their vr divsions in the not so distant future.

since the original psvr, it was obvious that the tech would need at least 15 years to develop and become more mainstream, but now i am starting to wonder if it needed 30 years. i am not seeing much growth or progress in this space other than slightly better graphical capabilities and resolutions. what matters most is the software and it continues to flounder.

I did my part….. bought one last week to reward myself for four years of sobriety. I know I will live GT7, RE4, Tetris and at least a few others. I probably cursed it, just like I did the WiiU and Vita….

@Jaz007 Yep, several nails on the head there. Those numbers still seem off, but yeah, I'd trust Atari's old management faster than this Bloomberg guy. Not only was the direct thing reactionary short term thinking, but also oxymoronic. If they had such high confidence it would sell so fast they would have a scalping problem, why would they not produce more before launching to avoid repeating the PS5 launch problem? They basically said "we believe this product will fail so we won't commit to a large scale launch, but just in case it's accidentally successful despite our best efforts to prevent that, we're going to restrict sales like it's Baby Yoda. 2"

@Ralizah You don't need a Facebook account.....instead you "only" need a Meta account.....which is totally not the same thing subject to the same TOC and the same datamining and sale of your data at all. I trust Zuck!

I had an old Galaxy gear and they keep reminding me that if I don't move my account from occulus to Meta by this week or next I'll lose the account and I'm like "yep, totes cool with that." But sadly, may end up doing it for Quest 3 anyway at some point. (gag- again.)

I've looked at the Steam Decks on and off, almost pulled the trigger once, but the thing is I have huge libraries on PS and XB and like 3 games on Steam. I was a PC gamer in the days when you still bought PC games on discs. Never got into the Steam thing. Didn't really do digital until 2018. And I like the idea of a "4k power box" when I want it and a handheld for when I want it. I can do that with my console library, but lack the gaming rig on PC for the same (nor would I want to set that up in the living room.) If I didn't have huge libraries elsewhere I would have done that, but, I of course have thousands of dollars of backlog I already own.

Since XB's been my main 3rd party purchase box for the whole digital ecosystem reason for a while it's a good fit if it's real, if I switched to PC/Deck I'd end up rebuying tons of stuff I already own, saving nothing or breaking even at best. That leaves remote play for PS stuff.

If I were just starting out? Yeah, Deck would be really appealing. I tried to justify it but decided I just can't justify getting into a FORTH ecosystem. (Quest...maybe...but that's difference since there's zero overlap other than PSVR2.)

I see so much negativity in this thread. Pity.

1. The tech is good, and the game play can reach transformative levels.
2. The list of games is actually quite substantial and the potential for new titles to provide different or improved experiences are multitude.

You can talk about high prices and tough competition, or you could argue that the entire industry is less than expected, but I wouldn't call it dead with a straight face.

@ROTTIEMAN16 Only if you assume that I meant total number of games available on the platform when I said support. I meant support in exclusivity on games that I cannot get on any other platform and the amount of attention and marketing PSVR got from Sony.

In the first year, there was a bunch of experiences you could only get on PSVR. PSVR Worlds, Playroom, Farpoint, Resi 7, RIGS, Everybody's Golf, Bound, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood plus a lot of games that launched FIRST on PSVR to later be ported to PC VR or Quest. Sony did a lot of marketing for it over the first 2 years, different bundles and showed games that were upcoming or in the pipeline.

I could be wrong but as someone who enjoys VR and PlayStation, I feel the marketing and general investment in exclusive titles is lacking.

@EfYI I think you're right on the money about the industry being less than expected, people are making out that VR is this massive behemoth in sales when in reality its still very niche, as I keep pointing out the MQ3 hasn't sold too well at the moment. If the VR industry is doing anything its due to the MQ2 but even then it has retention issues.

At this point they shouldn't have made it but instead put more development into a dedicated handled device instead of the playstation portal.

@Yozora146_ my take has been that if you take VR games as a whole, there are as many system sellers for VR as there are for any 2D console.

The problem is exclusivity and fragmentation.

If you have a gaming PC then it’s a fairly easy purchase as you have all the Meta, Valve and third party games at your disposal. It would be a sure fire purchase if you had the RE games though….

If you don’t have a PC, then an MQ3 owner has a great array of titles and video app support, but it becomes far less attractive as you lose Alyx, Lone Echo and Skyrim et al, and of course no RE games…

If you are considering PSVR2, then damn, it’s even worse again. I mean you have RE but at too high a cost in terms of losing everything else you’d have on MQ3 at least.

The argument behind exclusivity is that games like Alyx or RE8 VR would not be financially viable without a VR hardware manufacturer underwriting them.

But is that true? Is it just a self fulfilling prophecy, and if RE8 VR mode had been available on all platforms, it could have been profitable?

@AverageGamer Except I would say they are wisely using Insomniac to sell consoles, where they generate most of their revenue and it seems to have paid off since they obviously contributed to Phil Spencer declaring to the world they've lost the console war lol. That definitely seems the smarter move to me, rather than waste them for a market that is a huge risk with a higher chance of falling.

Only time will tell if Meta can be a success but as I said before it still sounds like a pipe dream at this point in time. 👍

Not a shocking failure given the fact that Sony put a massive price tag on a headset with almost zero support from PlayStation themselves.

With Sonys PS5 output being slow of late I find it interesting they thought they had the capacity to support another system too.

They either needed more studios to support or not to release it in the first place. It’s unfair for adopters having an expensive device with no support.

Reminds me of the vita in its later years.

@MrMagic Insomniac is a big enough studio that they can easily support consoles and VR. I mean they were doing that literally before Sony purchased them. Look at the studio history and see they were popping multiple games a year, as well releasing top games like the original Spider Man PS4. Sony buys them then they suddenly drop to 1 game every other year… It doesn’t take much to task a small team of developers to make a VR game. Most big VR games are coming from studios with less than 100 people.

"according to an article by Bloomberg journalist Takashi Mochizuki, who has had his stories corrected by the manufacturer in the past."

It's around about this point that you would normally stop writing your article and either completely remove reference to the source or throw the article in the trash, as the poor sales of PSVR2 isn't news - the device has a niche market and high cost, it's sales were always going to be low which would impact production, but writing an article based on an account from a dubious and questionable source is tantamount to peddling gossip that you know is likely inaccurate.

Lots of gamers use PushSquare as a primary source of PlayStation related news. Do better, PushSquare. Instead of peddling gossip for clicks, go to the source and get facts to report on. If there are no facts, there is no story.

@AverageGamer Yeah I'm sure it takes the same length of time to make a AAA game now as it did then but anyway, why don't you go and ask someone at insomniac or Sony why they couldn't do both because you're boring me.

I love my PSVR2, but not as much as I loved my PSVR1. And that's why this kind of news does not surprise me at all.

I really don't understand Sony's strategy on this one. So far, VR is a niche market. That, we know. So, make it an appealing product for that niche, for example by :

• allowing 3D movies on it, with a 3D bluray update (yes, an old and dead format, but an important one for that niche), and a real movie store, "à la Apple". (god damn it, I thought Sony was also a cinema company... so what the hell ?)
• giving the headset others cool applications than just gaming, something metaverse-like, this kind of thing.
• reducing the price, to get a more crowded installed-base.
• promoting the damn thing, maybe not on TV or cinemas (not enough money, I get it) but maybe on social media, I don't know...

Everything was done, from the beginning and by Sony itself, to make it fail. And that's a shame. A real shame.

Cause the headset, in itself, is quite good. Even awesome, on many games.

@carlos82
"Fun fact, Nintendo developed 4 games for it's Virtual Boy, so far Sony has made one for PSVR2"

That's so true and so terrifying. Well said, mate ! XD

One thing for sure is that I'll never buy a PSVR3, if one ever sees the light of day, sometime far way in a distant future.

The shame is : VR technology is awesome, in itself. This is the future of gaming, and of everything. Maybe it takes an Apple, to really make people understand that appeal.

From now on, I'm on META team. I really considered selling my PSVR2 to get a META QUEST 3. But I don't like selling hardware : I always end regretting it.

But as soon as META announce their QUEST 4, I click on the "preorder" button.

There is also a surplus of unmade PSVR2 games. Is this logic why they continue to not support the hardware with meaningful software?

Makes sense 🤔

@Bobobiwan Sony is more focused now on PC, GAAS etc.

PC gest more love from Sony than their own products. It's like they are wanting people to leave their platform and move to PC, no wonder they're in a downward trend the last couple of years.

@Mortal To be fair to Push and crew, Bloomberg is a serious, highly regarded, "real" journalism outfit. It's generally a much more "serious" news rag than something the likes of Push itself. The fact that this guy still writes for them after so many fictional stories is odd. I'm not saying I respect Bloomberg, but it's a serious as NYT, WSJ, etc. Not that I think any of those are particularly serious these days either....

@Bobobiwan Nintendo, not Apple. I've said for years VR will never be mainstream until Nintendo does it. Yeah, they did it with Virtual Boy (I own one!) but that was half hearted and before its time. They messed with stereoscopy on 3DS. Apple tends to make exotic products in small quantities as curios for the uber wealthy when they do these kinds of experiments. Meta tried but did it all wrong. Their culture of chasing the tech dragon prevents them from having a product and ecosystem to sell instead of a floating concept. The day Nintendo comes out with a cheap, sucky quality VR setup that somehow seems quirky and social and fun, it'll become the fad that no one can stop. They're great at taking bad products and making it the thing EVERYONE needs to have.

Yeah, I'm so tempted by Quest 3 at this point but with the rate they refresh hardware you know Q4 is right around the corner. And Q5 right behind that. Which is kind of their version of PSVR's failings.

Sony really should have learned from their own history in media though. Meta has porn, PSVR doesn't. It's Betamax all over again

@Dodoo SIE had the capacity to produce content for PS5 and for PSVR2. What went wrong was leadership (Jim and Herman) have had studios spend years, probably decades in man hours, running in circles chasing trends on games that were going to go nowhere, and closing the smaller studios or using them as mere support studios for those pipe dream games. With all hands on deck with buckets bailing out giant all-or-nothing Fortnite-or-Bust gambles, the steady stream of content for PS5 and all content for PSVR2 got left on the cutting room floor for 4 years.

Hilarious. Anyone who isn't blinded by "loyalty" knew this was going to happen.

@NeonPizza Yeah, lenses and sweet spot are benefits. The resolution is irrelevant, that little tablet behind it can't even put out PSVR2's PS5 based resolution let alon 2064x2208. Most of these games are barely getting 1080p.

Hardware wise, yeah, it has better lenses, screens, form factor, and is cheaper to boot. But the problem is the silly tablet hardware inside just can't put most of that to good use like the PS5 can. You get to pick between great lens/screen but lousy graphics, or ok but flawed screen/lenses with potentially great graphics....that most games don't use because they target quest..

And I don't think I'd consider investing in accessories for anything Meta because they just replace the product annually.....I don't see that as much of a plus, really. The built in speakers are awesome though.

That said I will say I don't have nearly the physical issues you have with VR2. The sweet spot is universally problematic, and it's not a big problem once you get used to it, but I'd certainly take major improvement, and a sharper screen. But the whole glare, god ray, comfort, light intrusion, etc, etc thing....I just don't have those problems. I spend hours at a time in the thing and all I know is what's happening in my game. Where I get annoyed is when the sweet spot gets in the way, smears get on the lenses, or when games are just blurry not because PS5 can't handle them but because the game is designed for Quest ,which is most of them. The controllers also don't bother me at all....except when I smack them into things....but I'm kinda glad about the ring when that happens otherwise I'd be smashing my knuckles.

It's just such a no mans land. A stand-alone HMD running tablet hardware is always a very compromised VR experience by nature. And making it accessories only to high end PCs brings VR back to 10 years ago so that's a no go. PSVR was to be the perfect sweet spot, but they've just blown it so badly. The compromises of the HMD itself would be fine if the software and software performance backed it up.

TBH I think Red Matter 2 proves what the PSVR2 CAN do and should be expected to ALWAYS do. And it's fantastic. And would be worse on a quest 3 without those OLED contrasts and colors. And it's just a little indie dev in Spain. Using Unreal engine. EVERY PSVR2 game should look like that. There is no excuse for them not to other than that they're just targeting quest or PC and just have no reason to bother making PSVR2 work well.

The problem is it's the ONLY game that looks like that. Maybe RE. Legendary Tales is tack sharp, too. Some low end textures, but it's so wonderfully sharp it's a joy anyway.

Sony never really invested in the product. Not just selling the HMD, not just pushing software to move it, but not supporting developers to make sure PSVR2 always comes out looking better than Quest when it really should. It should have been a no brainer that quest is a toy and PSVR2 is VR. But instead they keep the advantages minimal.

@NEStalgia Ah.

Well, purchases do need to go somewhere, and Zuck took it over, so it's unavoidable.

I tried the Meta Quest 2 for a few days (we own one) and it's... okay? Honestly, the thing was cool for, like, five minutes, and then it just became a gimmicky device with a poor library. I enjoyed Tetris Effect, but I enjoy that wherever I play it.

Honestly, having to wear glasses makes the entire VR headset experience uncomfortable, even with spacers designed to accommodate them. I'd figure out a solution if I felt like I would spend a lot of time with it, but... eh.

Fair enough on the Steam thing. Thankfully, aside from Nintendo, I'm not horrendously invested in console ecosystems these days. Valve impresses me more and more as time goes on, and now that Microsoft is all in on Steam and Sony is flirting more and more with becoming a multiplatform publisher as time goes on, there's little reason to ever buy a traditional console ever again.

@Ralizah The 2 is pretty old. Cheap, but old, so if that's your only VR experience it may not compare to something "newer". But heck if you think the Quest library is poor, definitely don't glance at the PSVR2 library What games did you try that felt gimmicky though? People say "gimmick" but really mean "I don't enjoy it" often, and it's surely not a gimmick for most games. But it does depend on the game. I mentioned some stand-outs above, I'm pretty sure Walkabout Minigolf is on Quest 2, and that's just something you can not do without VR. It's legit minigolf good physics, works great fun easter egg hunt in the environment that you spend more time on than the golf. Great fun. NMS and Legendary Tales....probably not on Quest 2 (not sure but I doubt it?) But if you have your gaming rig you can do PC with it. It transforms NMS. Legendary tales is literally Diablo1 meets Dark Souls in first person with 1:1 swordplay. Great fun. The demo/tutorial is a direct play in Diablo with "I can't believe it's not Tristram" music and a goblin kid that's definitely not Wirt. Great fun. Tin Hearts....cool game, awkward controls in 2D. Really great in VR. Being able to just grab blocks and move them just makes it more playable IMO. That sort of thing really benefits from VR. So it's more than a gimmick, for sure, but it depends what you're playing, of course.

But...glasses....yeah..... I have not had to wear glasses with VR. Weirdly I do wear glasses IRL for some things, but I've never needed them in VR. I guess the focus plane lands in my sweet spot. But it really doesn't sound like a good time. Contacts wearers are fine. And you can get prescription lenses for most popular VR headsets but that's a lot of cost and hassle and definitely a big problem.

Yeah, no question that Steam would have been ideal if I'd continued on from the old PC days. I ironically bailed to console in part BECAUSE of steam taking over, and big downloads were a no go when stuck on dialup lol. So it was console or nothing. Then that followed into buying games there, and here I am well invested in the ecosystems.

The only thing I wonder about with Steam is that Steam is great because it's privately owned and Gaben's little pet project (Where's Half Life 3?) But what happens to Steam when Gaben retires/dies/buys a house boat in Fiji and sells the shop for billions? Some evil hedge fund, Tencent, or other unsavory outfit buys it or buys all the shares when it goes IPO and turns it into an EGS-cesspool. Or Phil buys it and merges it with Windows Store lol.

Edit: OH! The Pixel Ripped games! Not sure if that's on the 2, but you NEED to play those if you haven't and they are. They're entirely built around gimmicks in the true Nintendo gimmick game fashion, no question, mostly having to balance playing a retro 2D platformer while also interacting with things in the 3D "real" world. But the whole thing is a love letter to retro gaming, and the culture of the good old days, made by gaming nerds for gaming nerds, and are truly some of the most delightful games I've played in 15 years because of it. Not super challenging, Very gimmick driven. But a must-play if you're a self respecting retro gamer.

@SgtTruth resident evil 7's exclusivity ran out years ago, yet capcom never bothered to move the vr to pc. Honestly it suggests they'd have never made it vr at all if Sony hadn't funded it. I personally think that's an example of exclusivity being a force for good, a product being made that very likely never would have otherwise.

Can we take a moment from the bickering and come together to praise the sub header. Great job!

I'm sure watching the trailers for PSVR2 games on a TV is no way to judge them fairly, but I just watched a bunch on the PS store and wow...with the exception of a handful like the Resident Evils and Horizon, they look just horrendous. Like the beta for the Switch version of a Wii U game that was meant for the PS3 is how the vast majority look to me...and uh, I don't want that.

@GKT FWIW, that's one reason it's hard to sell VR because watching the games on 2D trailers looks poor, they appear very low resolution because you're seeing only half the resolution (one eye.)

Games aren't going to look as impressive in terms of 2d visuals as a 2D game because it has to render everything TWICE so you get half the processing power per eye. However even "Switch" visuals can look excellent in real 3D. A good example is if you've seen a 3DS, a game can look really low res and lousy if youturn 3D off, but if you turn 3D up and it gets that pop-up diaorama look it looks much more detailed. Same in VR only on an even grander scale.

The games that look poor tend not to be the ones with simple "Switch" graphics, those tend to look great in real 3D. The ones that look poor are the more graphically complex ones because then it has to actually render low res and tends to get very blurry/smeary.

One big problem with showing VR games in 2D is that VR games don't implement a lot of shaders and shadowing techniques that flat games do to create the illusion of depth and lighting, because they don't have to, they're in REAL 3D, so they don't need optical illusions to trick you into seeing depth, you actually have real depth to see. But in a 2D trailer? It just looks definition-less.

That's a serious plight of selling VR without kiosks set up everywhere for people to see it themselves. For the masses, past experience with a 3DS's 3D slider is the best example. Or a Viewmaster. Am I dating myself?

@NEStalgia I don't mean gimmicky in a bad way. As a Nintendo fan, I'm obliged to at least be tolerant of gimmickry. I just mean, with the majority of stuff I've seen, the entirety of the appeal is the VR aspect, so once the wow factor wears off...

I played... Tetris Effect (good everywhere), a cute little game with 3D diorama environments called Moss, the demo for a Kizuna AI-themed rhythm game, some VR version of Resident Evil 4, and a few other random games.

Ah, a fellow stereoscopic 3D appreciator! Not every game made good use of it, but it undeniably improved certain titles when developers knew what to emphasize.

I guess the best way to describe my understanding of VR in those terms is that it's sort of like if the 3DS library was full of Face Raiders-tier games.

Stick a cinema theatre mode on it for gods sake. Then I’ll use it

@Ralizah Yeah Moss is an absolute classic VR game.. youre right, gimmicky in a Nintendo way, but ace classic. And Tetris effect is great anywhere. Vr doesn't add much really but it makes it easier IMO. Gawd that Kizuna AI rhythm game is awful. I payed money for that! Terrible waste of VR sadly. I haven't played the RE games so I know people rave about them but I can't imagine on quest 2 it would be so great.

PSVR1 had some great games that would be way better on any other hand. It's depressing they didn't work on vr2 at least.

Wish I could give you a list of quest 2 games that might give you a better time... Not sure what's on the 2 and I suspect some of my top picks are not. Red matter 2 is incredible for vr but the thrill is definitely the visuals that q2 would miss. Walkabout Mini golf is a must try if you can. Pixel ripped is pure gimmick but a must try if you can.

The star wars game is a surprising throwback and fun immersive shooter but with annoying grip controls. Oculus first party though. I'd recommend just for that dark ride thrill and some fun gunplay.

I have a number of recommended games but not sure how many are on q2 and look decent on it, and tried to avoid overly gimmick driven games. If nothing else, if you have the q2 sitting there you need to try the mini golf. If it's going to otherwise collect dust walkabout is the Wii bowling off VR. I keep ignoring more interesting games to go search for lost balls lol. It's weirdly addictive

Dyschronia if you ever wanted to be in an anime but act 3 really let's it down IMO.

Oh yeah I looved the stereoscopic 3d of 3ds. It made that little 3.5" screen seem bigger than 6.5" screens! It was great. I wasn't a vr neophyte, I had virtual boy. Played Dactyl Nightmare on those Atari Virtuality arcade machines back in the day. But psvr1 was my first modern hmd. When I first put it on the first thing I ran was the library in Moss. I was like "omg it's like 3ds but I'm inside it!" 😂

I knew it would have been Takashi "reporting" this before I'd even seen his name in the article. His often baseless clickbait should have had his contract with Bloomberg ended by now.

@rockodoodle congratulations on your sobriety

Meh. I love my headset and I've got a bunch of games I enjoy playing. I'll not get bored of Pistol Whip any time soon, for instance. There are also a multitude of games on the store I'm interested in. Even if the headset stalls right here, I'm all set. It's a shame more people haven't taken the plunge. There's plenty to enjoy on the platform.

Having said that, I know 4 people who have PS5 and 2 of them regularly play online in VR with me. That means, in my peer group, VR is already at +50% saturation. Those are some good numbers.

A console accessory should not cost more than the console, except that 44-button controller for steel battalion that thing is wild.

@mariomaster96 I think they just did it randomly and the risk didn't work. They should've invest it on making new games instead

Got called an idiot for saying this wouldn't sell.
I would love to see the numbers cos it must be below 1 million if they've stopped production.

I spent some time reading comments and realized just how little the average gamer even here knows about PSVR2. I can imagine how much less the general public knows and why it's perceived as as an undesirable device.

If you actually play it and see its library, you quickly realize the criticism is unfounded.

I can only agree with those who say it's too expensive (it should have received a price cut already) and that it doesn't have many exclusives.

As I predicted. PSVR2 was not going to succeed at that price.

@NeonPizza Yeah I don't know what the difference is considering the tablet in Q3 is waaaay less capable than a PS5 maybe it's sucky optimization, or maybe they disabled most of the lighting and shaders and volumetrics to just enable higher resolution so it's "sharper"? Which I agree sometimes is actually preferable. Maybe the lenses but that depends how much difficulty you have with sweet spots...I don't really have major issues with it but I know you do. It's not perfect but it's not unavoidable for me.

But I do agree about it needing to keep the graphics dialed back. Though, man, red matter 2 is just gorgeous. Why does everything not look that good? It's just UE. Nothing special. Have you tried legendary tales? Another game with dialed back settings that renders beautifully at good resolution. And the OLED black is admittedly nice for it

Problem is if Sony did another vr2 revision (they won't) it would still have all those problems with reprojection and low res compromises on the platform and pro won't really help all that much (and devs won't optimize for a niche of a niches niche anyway )

I agree about battery or cable. Thing with battery is Sony never EVER applies adequate batteries with anything. Ever. Ever. Any Sony product with a battery is instantly DOA. Plus cost. They can't match meta WITHOUT a battery and tablet. I didn't think they do vr3 though. Sony abandons what doesn't become a hit. Like Google. 2 strikes and I'm sure they're out. Plus their core business is bleeding and they need all resources fixing that for the next decade.

Sad though. I really prefer them to Meta.

For me, I'm more interested in virtual tourism (to apocalyptic hell scapes lol) so I like pretty vr very much not just retro in and out. But then again my current time sink is the walkabout golf which is very quest 2 friendly yet still pretty lol. Vr Myst Island. Can't say no to that

Btw wtf happened to firmament? Released on PC and just vanished for psvr2?

@Balosi were details of the deal ever published?!

Where did you read that about the duration of the exclusivity?

@NeonPizza I've seen trying to explain to people for ages that on PSVR2, one is noticeably looking through lenses, with all the blur, flare and distortion that entails.

Going back to it is like putting on your Grandmothers spectacles and wondering how the heck she can see in them.

Whereas pancakes are like having no lenses at all, and your eyes looking directly at the panel.

It is next gen clarity. Quest 3 is like going from an old SD CRT TV to a 4K flat screen.

I think the PSVR2 is a comfortable design, the problem is the narrow sweetspot requires you to tighten the strap far tighter than you do on the Quest 3. Combined with the lack of distortion and blur with pancakes, that's why I can spend hours straight in the Quest, whereas PSVR makes me feel rapidly fatigued and sick.

Certainly looks bulky though and those rings on the controllers need to go.

I'm also amazed that people don't notice the mura. But I guess if you don't know any different....

This thing just needs games. Otherwise, yeah, it's dead. Feels like I'm pointing out the obvious but maybe not, since Sony thought hey let's release a headset with no games.

@SgtTruth https://www.pcgamer.com/resident-evil-7-vr-is-exclusive-to-playstation-vr-for-a-year/

@DestructionAllstars
Most of the games on the PSVR2 were on the Quest library of games years ago. When people say lack of games they are usually talking about AAA games and/or 1st party games

@zupertramp it has plenty of games. Its real issue is proper marketing from Sony with some first party exclusives. I'd love to throw Kratos' axe in PSVR2 for example. Something that makes it stand out.

@SgtTruth I do notice the mura, but only on certain occasions. I think people that play a lot of horror games probably get more bothered by it since they're so often in very dark scenes. On most games I'll never see it at all. I think recently over a dozen different games I keep cycling through it's Red Matter 2 I noticed it on semi frequently because of how often you're looking at tiny details in very dark spaces and it becomes apparent. It's one of those things that isn't ideal, but is so rarely an annoyance and scene specific I don't consider it significantly problematic. Games with lots of action it's really not something the brain picks up on. But I imagine atmospheric horror type things creeping along in dark places it's a constant nuisance. I don't play those so it's exceptionally rare that I notice it (but when I do, of course it's just THERE....)

The main issue is just the sweet spot. I don't think over-tightening the strap is to compensate for the sweet spot. Maybe the bulk. I find the reason I tend to keep tightening it is less about getting the optics right, and more about it just moving around on my head if I have to look up often and don't have it tight enough. More often I think I'm prone to move the visor in one click too close which can cause discomfort if I don't remember to back it away slightly from what I "think" is the right closeness. Also helps the sweet spot.

In terms of the screens/lenses the issues I have are manly that sweet spot that we all know of (it's not a deal breaker but it's probably the worst aspect of the unit), and when I look to the far sides I do notice the fresnel rings and associated stepping distortion. But I do, personally, have a very wide FOV IRL so that probably makes that more of an issue for me than others.

This gets into the biggest problem overall with VR as a product. As a wearable, let alone as an optical device, it's so anatomy specifc what affects one person and other. Everyone can agree it needs better sweet spot, but not everyone can agree how significantly it can interfere with enjoyment. Some say it clamps too hard, personally I can wear it for hours and it not bother me most days, though there's some days it does, probably because I just clamped it on too much. It's just so YMMV which is probably one of the biggest issues with VR overall.

Of course Quest 3 does a lot of that better, but I actually hate the quest center straps, weight on the top of my head bothers me, personally WAY more than any discomfort with PSVR2. All back to that anatomy thing.

Like neon said, VR doesn't really get great till 2035! And Zuck will be the only game in town. Until then it's one set of tradeoffs or another.

The rings....I get it, it's not perfect, I hit them together a lot when doing things like dual gripping a sword or gun and a few games designed for quest shaped controllers want you to do hand gestures that you just can't do with the rings on there because it wants the hands close. That's problematic. .....it takes an extra 20 seconds to put them on....IDK, it's not a significant problem to me and it's saved me from shredding my knuckles more than once. But I'd be equally happy without them. Anatomy and all that. Maybe everyone should just get an iphone and a switch and game on that and be happier, this wearable thing will never get consensus appeal like flat rectangles do lol.

Everyone bangs on about the lack of content not justifying the price tag, and I get it, but for me it's the fact this "cutting edge technology" looks like something from the 80s.

VR is going nowhere as long as the tech is such a cumbersome, heavy and unnatural mess.

Wearable technology was supposed to be everywhere by now, but the whole thing has stalled. I don't even see everyone with a smartwatch, let alone other wearable technology.

It will come... but it won't be Sony.

VR is a pleasure for those who can afford it nothing more

@NeonPizza re4 is better on quest than psvr2's remake....you've been drinking too much of that meta coolade mate!I've played both and the original is OK on quest but it doesn't even get close to the psvr2 version even with low res and reprojection

@NEStalgia try the globular cluster,it solves all the comfort,movement and sweet spot problems.I couldn't wear mine for more than 20 mins but now 2-3 hours isn't a problem

@NeonPizza Ugh, yeah, jeez for $2000 I'll just upgrade my TV, which I just did two months ago to a 4K 120Hz set, which is quite nice. No medieval torture required. 😉😂
Aside from a PC upgrade which I plan to do at some point, the only new/future gaming hardware on my radar is Switch 2.

@NeonPizza I'm a 52 year old and yes you do sound like your fanboying for the quest by saying re4 is a better game than re4 remake.Gameplay wise the psvr2 version is loads better and graphics wise it's not even close even taking into consideration psvr2s lower resolution,mura and reprojection.Just because you write a lot of words doesn't make you right btw

@ROTTIEMAN16 no deadly serious I agree with him.

RE4 VR is far superior on Q3 to PSVR2.

It doesn’t have the photo realistic look and obviously lacks some of the additional “remake” systems and sections, but it is vastly clearer, crisper, higher res and feels far more snappy, faster and intuitive to play.

A lot of that is down to superior hardware (lenses etc) and no matter what it would always be better than the PSVR2 version, but it’s also the case the PSVR2 version is not as good as it could have been, by trying to stay too faithful to a current gen non-VR game.

A more toned down Red Matter 2 type presentation would have been better.

@SgtTruth totally disagree with you...re4 remake looks better,plays better and is the better game in general.Q3 version has better clarity and resolution but it's a ps2 game with cartoon graphics.I really enjoyed the quest version but nowhere near as much as the remake as its blacks were grey and the fov is much smaller so looks like scuba goggles.Were not gonna agree so be it🤷‍♂️

@ROTTIEMAN16 what? Huh?

How does the PS5 version “play” better? It feels really sluggish and has less VR interaction.

PSVR2 does not have black blacks. It’s always lit up and smeared by the fresnel mess and the darkness has that mura grain.

PSVR2 works better in bright outdoor daytime environments like in Horizon or GT7.

As for the FOV - I think you are just making it up at this point?!

Both headsets have a near identical FOV on paper, but PSVR2 has a perceived FOV of about 1 degree, as everything that isn’t dead centre is blurred by the fresnels!!!!

I’ll say this, never say never, until we get actual confirmation, please assume the psvr2 is still active.
They have it pre-owned at game stop if you find it there.