Sony's VR headset-console integration could limit sales, but allow depth - Emerging Tech Brew

If the aboriginal of gaming is VR, Sony is doing its champion to get ready.

The company’s second-generation VR headset, the PS VR2, is acceptable to merchandise successful February 2023 and volition outgo $550. The institution plans to marque 2 cardinal headsets by March 2023, per Bloomberg; for comparison, successful total, 11.2 million VR/AR headsets were sold successful 2021, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC).

The PS VR2 is Sony’s latest bid to vie successful the VR headset market, which Meta presently dominates with 86% marketplace stock arsenic of Q2 2022, according to IDC, but it comes with a large caveat. Unlike Meta’s standalone headsets, Sony’s merchandise indispensable beryllium connected to a PS5, of which the institution has sold 25 cardinal units since its 2020 release.

“[Sony is] consciously gearing it to a smaller, much lucrative market. I don’t deliberation they’re aiming to get a bulk of the VR headset sales,” Yoram Wurmser, main expert astatine Insider Intelligence, told Emerging Tech Brew. “In presumption of portion sales, that’s decidedly going to bounds them.”

Even so, Wurmser said Sony’s absorption connected gaming could beryllium a strength. While Meta’s concern strategy is focused connected finding an assemblage for its VR offerings, ranging from workplace apps to fittingness to casual gaming, Sony is already a level for premium gaming, Wurmser said.

“If you speech astir fig of users, I deliberation Meta has amended potential,” Jitesh Ubrani, elder probe manager for worldwide mobile instrumentality trackers astatine IDC, told Emerging Tech Brew. “But if you speech astir dollars, I deliberation that’s wherever it could beryllium either one’s game. The crushed I accidental that is due to the fact that games for PSVR person typically been much costly than they person been for Quest 2.”

In August, Sony reported that the PS4, which is required to usage the archetypal variation of the PS VR, has sold 117.2 cardinal units overall. Yet IDC estimates that lone 5.5 cardinal PS VR headsets person been sold to date. Meanwhile, since it debuted successful October 2020, 17.2 cardinal units of the Quest 2 person been shipped arsenic of Q2 2022, according to IDC.

Sony declined to marque idiosyncratic disposable for remark earlier work of this story. It has not announced immoderate plans for an untethered headset.

The strategy of linking the headset with the console presents 1 further situation that could bounds sales, Urbani said: Consumers that bash not already ain a PS5 volition request to bargain not 1 but two expensive pieces of hardware. In total, the terms of the PS VR2 and accompanying PS5 would scope implicit $1,000 total. At a clip erstwhile ostentation is high, that could beryllium a hard sell, helium said.

“The terms is going to beryllium a obstruction for many, adjacent those who are benignant of connected the obstruction close now. You’re fundamentally doubling your cost. I deliberation a batch of radical are gonna deliberation doubly astir that, particularly fixed the macroeconomic situation that we're successful today,” Ubrani said.