PSVR2 Production Halts As Headsets Fail To Sell: Report

The PlayStation VR2 is struggling, it seems. According to a March 17 Bloomberg report, Sony has paused of the PS5’s virtual reality headset after its initial supply has failed to pick up sales momentum, resulting in an overflow of unsold stock.

Bloomberg states that Sony has produced 2 million PSVR2 headsets since the device’s launch in February 2023, with sales consistently declining each quarter, according to the International Data Corporation. This is in line with a January 2023 Bloomberg report of a rough start for Sony’s headset. Even before the PlayStation VR2 was out, Sony was reportedly struggling to meet its own pre-order expectations, though the company later denied this.

At a glance, there are a few reasons this might be happening. The PSVR2 headset is expensive, with a higher retail price than the PlayStation 5 itself. VR is still a niche market, primarily because it’s so expensive and also because there aren’t a lot of big games that support it. And speaking from experience, VR headsets are cumbersome to wear and can cause motion sickness in some users. There’s also the fact that the PSVR2 headset is not backwards compatible with the original headset’s games. So there’s a lot working against the device, even though it’s an impressive piece of tech.

PSVR2 also lacks a major system-selling game. While Horizon: Call of the Mountain put one of Sony’s big franchises on the headset on launch day, much of the device’s line-up falls back on novelty games that make great tech demos, but don’t make a great case for dropping half a grand. The original PSVR sold around 5 million units by 2020, which was a drop in the bucket in terms of attach rate to the 106 million PlayStation 4 consoles sold at the time. Sony has said it’s testing PSVR2 on PC, so maybe it will see an uptick in sales when it’s not tied to specific hardware.

For more on the PlayStation VR2, check out Kotaku’s review.