Rumor: Sony Cuts PlayStation VR2 Production by 20% - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 06 April 2023 / 5,661 Views
Research firm IDC last week claimed the PlayStation VR2 is off to a slow start and the VR headset is likely to have only sold around 270,000 units by the end of March.
Insider Ming-Chi Kuo is now claiming Sony has cut its production plans for the PlayStation VR2 for the year of 2023 by around 20 percent.
The insider also claims other VR headsets haven't sold well with the Meta Quest Pro having shipped about 300,000 units lifetime and China’s largest AR/VR headset brand, Pico, having shipped 40 percent lower units in 2022 than expected.
This follows another report by Bloomberg from before the VR headset launched that Sony had cut its production from two million units to one million units by March 2023. The report also claimed Sony was looking to ship about 1.5 million PlayStation VR2 units between April 2023 and March 2024.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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And people had a go at MS for pulling out of VR/AR.
The problem here is Sonys method to rely on 3rd party to sell these devices. Get off your high horse and create content for your system otherwise it will die just like the Vita.
VR will always be niche thing and that is ok if they have the right expectations.
This number would still make it the biggest launch of any VR device. People's expectations are wildly out of whack.
Lol. MS never enters a space until it takes off anyway.
Why would they. Let someone else take all the risk and you come in and attempt to take the glory. Then again most huge corps are very risk adverse compared to your startup which is all risk.
And then complain that the company that made it took of have to much marketshare =p
Hmmm, I understand where you are going but that actually does not happen often. Lets take mobile, I believe the first companies to market I do not believe are still in the market. If we look at Apple, they were definitely not first to market but they came with a disruptive OS and hardware and took it by storm. Then we have Google, where they brought in a successful alternative OS in Android and was able to capture a large segment of the mobile market but neither of those companies I mentioned were first to market and they have made sure to keep a pretty good iron grip on their to keep their marketshare.
If we looking at gaming consoles well pretty much the same. None of the big players today were their at the start. They all came in with disruptive hardware or better against the competition at the time. So I would say there is always someone bigger looking to jump into any market especially if they have a disruptive product to take advantage of any weakness. Let others take all the risk and come in and take advantage of it but I guess people really do not understand business as this happens a lot.
Nintendo game and watch was made on 1980 and NES on 1983, so quite close to the first generation of home consoles/portables or at least customer hardware.
And as you put iPhone entered the smartphone market basically when it was still niche.
VR have been going for a longer time than it took Nintendo to enter console market, and MS even pointed to having AR on the X1 and have compatibility for it in windows.
So there is a difference between a company not wanting to create a new market (and actually most companies want to create a new market to have it all by themselves), saying it is interested but never going after it, and waiting for it to be very big to them try to enter. Usually when the market is already big the barrier for entry is also big.
The Game and Watch legitimately felt pretty close to the first generation of consoles, most of which were released in the early to mid'70s.
But to many old fogies like me (I turn 50 this year) who lived it, the NES felt like an eternity into the console market. I started gaming on a home Pong clone in the 1970s. Then you had the dominance of Atari starting in 1977. The Mattel Intellivision in 1979. The ColecoVision in 1982. By the time the NES came out in 1985* it felt like gaming had been around for a long-ass time already.
Of course, I was young at the time, and the passage of time seems slower when you're young. :P
- While the Famicom came out in 1983, the NES didn't come out until 1985.
Series is selling less this year than last so seems like they may also cut production.
Maybe they will, how knows. I am sure MS is waiting to see how their lineup shapes up against demand first before making any decisions.
I don't believe they had a high production in the first place. Their games are on everything.
And they are still not achieving full sellthrough? And may need to cut down already?
They were very hard to find when new and they had priority in production. Says enough.
Says enough that is basically tracking similar to X1 which everyone blames bad reveal for the poor sales? Ok. Take your win.
Its not my win. I dont own shares within MS.
We dont know many consoles MS are making, probably less than the X1 meaning their sales targets might not be as high.
VR will never be mainstream until it is affordable
That is like the 4th or so rumor in a row without any source (some of those were even directly denied), but let's keep the bad rumors for PSVR2.
its a gimmick like the kinect fun at 1st then gets left on the shelf for months. also it being the price of a PS5 Dont help
It's a pretty cool piece of tech. But the price point, small number of games, need for space and potential for motion sickness is going to hurt Its mass appeal.
When it's that expensive,
Nobody can purchase it!
Even if it's a magnificent add on to the PlayStation 5.
So Sony went from wanting to make 2 million of them by now, to wanting to make 1 million of them by now, to only selling around 270k by now...ouch!
VR was always going to be niche. I'm actually surprised VR devices got the sort of sales they did on previous devices the past few years.
But according to these numbers on new VR devices it seems most people who want VR have already bought one and perhaps not so willing to upgrade to newer VR devices. Which probably means of the people who have gotten VR devices most of them only play with a little bit so the actual VR audience is likely much smaller than the sales the past few years suggested. Likely a lot of sales of those VR models were from buying the fancy new thing and being excited that VR tech was finally mature enough to be a consumer product...and then it doesn't get used much after the initial excitement.
Pretty cool that the 3 numbers you posted were official right?
Current economy is the worst possible time for a VR project.
I was curious until I learned that it would not support games from their previous VR system (which I didn't buy). This disregard for backwards compatibility felt like a very stupid move since you could have a bunch games from the previous gen strengthen your game library on day 1. After that, I lost all interest.
Are you saying that they need to rely on Valve to help boost their sales? A game that released years ago.. Remember Valve have their own headset and community to support. Sony need to make their own killer.
Nope, he is saying that having another big title would help on sales. And we don't even really now if it is struggling to sell or not since no official numbers are know either for forecast or real sales.
They most likely started, you even have games that were PSVR1 and got patched in time for PSVR2, but not all devs would care (if they don't see potential for new revenue).
