Black Friday is still a week away, but Sony has already released its Black Friday deals, including the best PSVR 2 sale we’ve seen. You can now get the PSVR 2 Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle for just $350, a 42% discount over the usual price.

Update (December 10th, 2024): Our article detailing PSVR 2’s post-Black Friday sales volume can be found here.

The PSVR 2 Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle is currently on sale for $350. This is almost certainly the best the headset will see this year.

The bundle includes the PSVR 2 headset, controllers, and a digital copy of Horizon Call of the Mountain, a flagship title for the platform which we scored an 8.5 out of 10 in our review. The headset, originally released in early 2023, features OLED displays, impressive haptics, a resolution of 2,000 × 2,040 per-eye, and inside-out tracking.

While the PSVR 2 headset itself has dipped to $350 previously, this is the first time we’ve seen the Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle drop to this price. Curiously, the PSVR 2 headset itself is also on sale for $350. That’s the same price, but without the bundled game… so definitely got for the bundle if you’re planning to jump on this deal.

SEE ALSO
'Metro Awakening' to Release on All Major Headsets in November, New Gameplay Revealed

This discount follows the release of Sony’s PC VR adapter, which became available in August for $60. The adapter allows the PSVR 2 to be used with SteamVR on compatible gaming PCs, although certain features like HDR, headset haptics, and adaptive triggers are not supported when used with PC.

The $350 deal is currently listed as a limited-time offer. If you can’t find stock on Amazon, we’re also seeing the deal at Target, Walmart, Best Buy, and direct from PlayStation.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • eadVrim

    For those who haven't tried VR OLED before. It's much more immersive.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Meh, I think visuals of my HTC Vive Pro aren't any better as the ones of my Pico 4.

      • Mateusz Jakubczyk

        Visuals of my old Rift CV1 aren't any better too as the ones of my Quest 3 ;)

        • eadVrim

          Try to re test your CV1 and focus on colors, black and contrast.

          • Mateusz Jakubczyk

            Come on, I only keep Rift as a relic and I have no intention of using it :P Poor resolution and eye-catching Mura, so it doesn't matter that it's OLED, it doesn't compare to the Quest 3 display, I prefer sharpness and clarity.

          • eadVrim

            It is no doubt Q3 is better than CV1, but for me PSVR2 Oled is much immersive than Q3 LCD

          • Mateusz Jakubczyk

            But it still has worse resolution, sharpness and clarity, and that's more important to me :P

          • eadVrim

            At least I feel like I’m looking at another world, not at a huge 3D screen.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Maybe, which I highly doubt. But the immersion is broken immediately due to the cable yanking you back into reality…. But I guess you don't use your Quest 3 anymore now you have a PSVR2.

          • eadVrim

            In general comaprison Q3 is better, but for immersive PCVR games PSVR2 wins.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            No it doesn't.

          • polysix

            Utter nonsense, HAD 8 HMDS here inc 2 standalone (quest 2 and pro I used for PCVR), the wireless thing is overblown at this point – so many downsides – battery drain (90 mins playtime never charged when you want to play), dim screens (battery), heat (battery) weight (battery), compression, lag, CRAP LCD (even on PRO with LD)… NONE OF IT feels real it feels FLAT.

            PSVR2, OLED, like my old rift/vive etc but with much better lenses, higher res, HDR, WIDER FOV (than quests too), on PC no lag, no compression, no PC power suck from video streaming… and on PS5 advanced haptics and HDR. No competition. PSVR2 IS VR, Quests are like virtual virtual reality… fake AF and never immersive.

            OLED or nothing for VR.

          • Mateusz Jakubczyk

            "on PC no lag, no compression" – and shitty lenses, only 18 pixels per degree, a screen door effect filter, mura, glare, and chromatic aberration, which makes the image from PCVR look much less clear than when using Quest 3.

          • foamreality

            Worse lenses, low PPD, some glare and mura and STILL 100x more immersive VR experience than any LCD headset including high end varjo.

          • Mateusz Jakubczyk

            Because you say so? How do you measure immersion? Sorry, but these are just your opinions, not facts.

          • Leisure Suit Barry

            I'm convinced the people who keep going on about immersion don't really play VR games for the actual game, they just play VR for the immersion and probably have never completed a game, got all trophies etc

            Even flat screen games are immersive if the game ropes you in.

          • Michael Speth

            Agree. But most people have been brain washed by Meta to believe mobile VR is VR when in reality mobile VR is garbage VR. They settled with quest 3 due to optics but sacrificed what it means to be real VR.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            And I say your glorifying PSVR2 is utter nonsense as it isn't more immersive as all the other headsets.

          • Mike

            i think it is. and just because you don't agree doesn't invalidate our opinions.

          • Opinions are not fact, but you guys sure seem to think so. VR is subjective. Learn the difference between that and objective, please.

          • foamreality

            Agree 100%. Anybody who has used a OLED headset will ever be happy with an LCD. Higher esolution and lenses can never make up for it. Its like watching old 480p netflix on an 8k TV vs 720p on a 1080p TV (the latter will always be WAY better!)

          • simon cox

            Ive used oled and much more happy with Q3 running pc over wifi

          • Again, subjective opinion is not fact. Did all of you guys fail debate class?

          • foamreality

            This.All the resolution and super duper lenses of modern cheap LCD screen heasets still don't beat the 'other worldness' of the same games even when played on the original fresnel Vive (OLED). When you feel like you have a screen on your face it just kills it. OLED is THE most important thing for VR in IMO. Apple understood this with the AVP, and Sony did too. Even it's poor lenses, mura, seetspot issues pale in comparison with the problem of having an LCD screen with amazing lenses and high resolution (which can't be used at native resolution with most graphics cards (if any) for games where it would be worth having).

          • Mateusz Jakubczyk

            "Apple understood this with the AVP, and Sony did too" – Apple equipped their AVP with high quality micro-OLEDs, not the shitty old generation OLEDs, don't even compare it to PSVR2, lol

          • Jesus Christ. One day you morons are going to realize that VR affects different people in different ways and that you cannot just say "This is better because I say so" … maybe state your opinions as opinions and leave the reporting of facts to David and Ian.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            – OLED contrast is a must. Vanilla ice cream is the most popular and therefore the best.
            – Nobody can deal with a tether. Only chocolate ice cream is true ice cream, everything else just junk companies later came up for the money.
            – What's the point with an FoV below 120°. Anybody with working taste buds will only go for the subtle smoothness of strawberry ice cream.
            – Not using pancake lenses will make you legally blind. Only boomers still haven't grasped that Neapolitan ice cream is the sole option if you want to get the whole ice cream experience.

            Next week on "Undeniable Facts Totally Based On Objective Evidence":

            – Are mobile SoC even capable of running VR games? Pineapple on pizza – must or bust?

      • polysix

        Now try a PSVR2 on GT7 on PS5 pro and get back to us. Ex vive, rift, quest 2/pro owner here. PSVR2 is the best VR we currently have on balance. OLED is essential, HDR is awesome and the advanced haptics immerse you in the worlds like nothing on PC or esp standalone LCD mobile chip crap.

        • Somerandomindividual

          I have tested both extensively in PCVR. PSVR2 fresnel lenses are BAD and the clarity is poor across the frame. Mura s obvious and distracting. The sweet spot is tiny and needs constant readjusting. OLED may be better in principle, but in practise a Quest 3 running PCVR is better than a PSVR2 in 90% of situations.

          • Mike

            Funny how i think just the opposite. I find the Fresnel lenses on the psvr2 to be very good. Clarity for me is good. Yes, it has a smaller sweet spot but when you're in the sweet spot the edge-to-edge clarity is about as good as the pimax crystal. there is very little god rays compared to my now retired reverb g2, and rift s. resolution is not as high as my crystal but since I can only run the crystal at about 75% of its native resolution in most games on my rtx 4080 the two headsets end up looking very close on pc. Binocular overlap on psvr2 is very good and the oled makes a huge differeence in dark games . so much so that I have retired my crystal and use the psvr2 for most everything. the only major issue I have with psvr2 is the controllers have a very short range for Bluetooth and the signal is line of sight. as a result, its a seated experience for me where as the pimax is not. all that being said i think the PSVR2 is the most immersive headset from a visual standpoint.

          • Leisure Suit Barry

            C'mon dude, don't do the Sony fanboys like that, they can't handle the truth

        • Andrew Jakobs

          No I won't try it as I don't care about sitting sim games, I care about moving around and being really active in VR. And from my own experience OLED isn't essential, it is just a 'nice to have', but no wire is essential to me, nothing more immersion breaking as that freaking wire.
          PSVR2 HDR and haptics don't work for PCVR (at the moment).

    • Leisure Suit Barry

      PSVR1 was OLED

      Quest 1 was OLED

      People out here thinking OLED VR is some fancy tech

      • eadVrim

        Compared to VR LCD yes, PSVR2 PCVR differs from other previous Oled headsets by its high brightness that look close to HDR.

        • foamreality

          Also the PSVR1 was an amazing headset for its time, even today it looks better than some modern LCD ones, despite loss of resolution. If that had been LCD it would have put people of VR for longer than the quest has.

          • simon cox

            Good headset for the time but the overall vr experience wasn't great

      • polysix

        Nobody said 'fancy' but true VR fans know how vital OLED is to immersion, you are looking at the world on LCD but are IN the world on OLED. I've had 8 HMDs inc Quest 2/pro LCD and they were the most boring VR of my life (PCVR with them). PSVR2 has been the best. NO gimmicks like MR, ALL immersion enhancements like low latency, wide FOV, good binocular overlap, HEADSET RUMBLE is awesome in many games, adaptative triggers, eye tracking…. NO BATTERIES, always ready to play

        • foamreality

          eye tracking on pc would make this the best headset for your PC for under $1000 hands down. No other headset has OLED and eyetracking except the AVP. But sony is also one of the cheapest headsets around.

        • Leisure Suit Barry

          For me, clarity is the most important thing in VR.

          Worry about OLED, HDR etc when clarity is where it should be, which is still a long way off.

          PSVR2 is like having an old CRT TV with OLED/HDR

        • Arno van Wingerde

          Except that the controllers run out of battery much faster than their Quest counterparts. And calling NO BATTERIES (headset) batteries an advantage when that means you have a cable is plainly deluded, then you can also hookup the controllers by cable so you really do not need batteries… I wonder why virtually nobody even tried that?

  • Let's see how much this will increase the sales of PSVR 2…

    • Azurewrath

      sales spiked on Amazon from a few hundred to 8k+ at the time of this writing. Gamestop has it as one of the best sellers just behind the PS5 bundles.

  • Nevets

    It's unsupported hardware basically. What's the pipeline for attractive or AAA games?

    • MeowMix

      Yup. Considered picking one up, but looked up all the PSVR2 only exlusives and it's all the same. And the vast majority of the upcoming library all 3rd party games available on Quest and/or PCVR. No indication of any 1st party games in the works. Dead platform.

    • Azurewrath

      Hitman WOA is coming in March. What's the pipeline for attractive or AAA games on any platform, honestly?

      • Leisure Suit Barry

        Hitman, a last-gen PSVR1 game

        Yay!

        • polysix

          Batman an nerfed barely 'VR' game served on a shitty LCD screen run by LAST-GEN-LAST-GEN-LAST GEN equiv mobile chips.

          GT7 and RE4 RM are better than ANYTHING on Quest.

          • BadHostile

            Almost no one wants to play Resident Evil 4 Remake in VR, according to official statistics only 149 thousand players reached for this game in a year (even though the VR mode was free for owners of the flat version). This is proof that it is not worth making such games for PSVR2, because they will not earn money anyway. Sony is obviously aware of this, because the last VR game they made was Horizon Call of the Mountain almost two years ago and since then they have completely abandoned making high-budget games for PSVR2 :P

            And as for Batman – oh, I see that you haters are really butthurt about the fact that VR GOTY 2024 is a quest exclusive :D

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            Careful about that "proof": Sony now sold 66mn PS5, so with 2mn PSVR2, only ~3% could even play RE4 in VR. Meaning the statistics unavoidably will show low VR game engagement.

            And HCotM is more like an extended tech demo in one of Sony's most popular franchises, but nowhere near the extend of the other Horizon games. Which actually makes sense, as the PSVR2 with rather low resolution for a 2023 tethered HMD supposed to last a console generation, but adding ETFR to increate frame rates in VR in addition to reprojection, was clearly designed to enable VR in flat AAA titles.

            The strategy was never to release VR-only titles like HCotM, which usually lose a lot of money. So the lack of AAA VR-only Sony titles isn't any more of an indicator for Sony abandoning PSVR2 than currently low player counts for the VR modes in RE4 are proof that releasing hybrid games won't pay off.

            If nothing changes and PSVR2 sales stay low due to the high price, there indeed will be no motivation for developers to add VR support. But this is an article about Sony offering PSVR2 incl. HCotM for USD 350 instead of the regular USD 610, a price drop of more than 40%, and the resulting massive increase in sales. So things might change.

          • Leisure Suit Barry

            What's Quest got to do with it?

            If you want to play many AAA VR games, it's on PC via mods, it's not on PSVR2.

            PSVR2 is a sales flop, currently around 2M sold. You're not going to get devs making AAA for such a small userbase.

          • ApocalypseShadow

            I have a Quest 3. And barely any devs are making AAA games for it. And it and Quest 2 have supposedly sold over 20 million. There's no high influx of AAA on the platform. It's mostly indie just like every other VR platform. Batman was Facebook money. You know, the company that has burned through over 50 billion dollars to gain a lead and still big developers shun the platform. EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc etc aren't making games for this supposedly huge player base. Where's Capcom? Oh. They put two big games on Sony's and none on Quest 3. No Sega. No Konami. No Namco. Blah blah blah.

            And you speak of PC. Lol. What big AAA developers are making VR games for PC? You played yourself with this nonsense of talking down PS VR 2 when everyone's backyard is empty.

          • Leisure Suit Barry

            No developers are making AAA VR games for PC, but you can play most of them with mods

            The VR industry is in the crapper right now and PSVR2 has only proved that as it’s selling worse than PSVR1

  • sfmike

    Since Sony refuses to support the PSVR2 it's a stupid buy. I have one and hardly ever use it. Lazy Sony has a hate relationship with 3D and maybe that plays into their avoidance of this platform. They have refused to let the Blu-ray drive play 3D discs, which was something the old versions did so well and a simple patch could fix this. Corporations have no sense of customer satisfaction now but only a concern on how to increase profits quarterly on the backs of financially stressed consumers.

  • Michael Speth

    Sony actively supports the PSVR2.

    * PSVR2 has a large library of great games that is growing
    * PSVR2 games including GT7 (1st party) are/have getting PS5 Pro support
    * PSVR2 has a windows driver (that Sony SUPPORTS) for PC compatibility
    * Sony officialy supports the PSVR2 and has ZERO (ABSOLUTLY ZERO) claims that Sony is ending support for PSVR2.

    • BadHostile

      "* PSVR2 has a large library of great games that is growing" – but these are what you call "trash Quest games" that you hate so much…
      How many PSVR2 games has Sony released this year? The last PSVR2 game Sony made was Horizon: Call of the Mountain, which was a… launch title…
      But keep living in the fantasy that Sony still supports its hardware.

    • Hussain X

      "Sony actively supports the PSVR2."

      I may have disagreed. But given how much Valve has and does for VR compared to Sony (significantly less if not non existent right now), and people are mute and give Valve a pass, I cannot disagree. Plus the likes of Xbox/Nintendo are completely absent from VR too. I gotta say, Quest 3 and PSVR2 are best bang for buck headsets right now, being able to access their own platform plus PCVR where the 3rd party devs and modders bring tremendous value into PCVR.

      • Storymode Chronicles

        Microsoft is working with Samsung and Google on an Xbox branded VR headset. No word on how it'll actually interact with the Xbox, but I'd imagine it'll at least be a solid PCVR headset and considering Quest can stream Game Pass games, it should be useful for that as well. VR conversions of Microsoft first-party console titles would be the dream though.

        • Mateusz Jakubczyk

          No, Microsoft is working with Meta and is planning to release an Xbox headset based on the Quest 3.

          • Storymode Chronicles

            Ooooooh yeah that’s right. Some hopeful part of my brain must have hallucinated. Probably just a modified Quest with Xbox branding and no real functionality with the console in terms of real VR experiences, just Game Pass streaming.

          • polysix

            yay more LCD shit in VR. I'll stick with Sony.

          • Mateusz Jakubczyk

            So you'd rather stay with the shitty and problematic OLED. I'd rather wait for a micro-OLED device (maybe ASUS ROG VR will have one), the OLEDs from PSVR2 don't compete with it :P

          • foamreality

            OLED, even the old pentile, is more immersive than high resolution headsts. The only people who say otherwise are the people who have never used OLED in an AAA titled VR game. There is no comparison between the original vive and the quest 3. Original vive wins hands down, even with poorer lenses.

          • Mateusz Jakubczyk

            "There is no comparison between the original vive and the quest 3. Original vive wins hands down, even with poorer lenses." – if someone writes something like that, they are either out of their mind, or haven't used the old HTC VIVE for a long time, or have never had a Quest 3 on their head. There are simply no other options :P

          • Fabian

            The original vive really is like from the stone age, I would hate playing with that screen door, but I agree that any modern OLED device is superior to any LCD-Device. I only use my Quest3 for some mixed reality workout stuff and all other gaming with the PSVR2.

      • kakek

        Fair enough.

        But you have to take in account the difference in size. Despite the weight of steam in the PC gaming market, Valve is still a much smaller company than either meta or sony.
        Estimated revenue for Meta is over 100 billion yearly, Sony around 25 billions, valve is under 10 billions.

        Also, PSVR2 is a much more recent hardware release.

        • Hussain X

          I have taken that into account. Thankfully you didn't use 300 or so number of employees to say it's a small company so it can't do as much like others can as it doesn't have enough personnel (like some do to defend Valve). I would've just said Valve is employing as few people as it can to maintain the cash cow instead of hiring a lot more people to reinvest.

          You have used revenue to show that Valve is a small company. Here's my quick answer.

          Meta's 100 billion is made up from other sources of income, not just gaming. It also spends a lot of money maintaining and building products in those non gaming areas. It also employs around 70,000 employees paying them wages.

          Sony's 25 billions from further investigation is from Sony's gaming division. Sony's gaming division employs around 12,000 employees paying them wages.

          Let's take Valve's revenue as 10 billion with 300 employees (reportedly 336 in 2021 but will use 300 for quick maths). If Meta and Sony used Valve's hiring of employees ratio to revenue, Meta would've employeed just 3,000 people vs 70,000 (300*10, since Meta makes 10 times Valve's revenue), and Sony gaming would've employed just 750 employees vs 12,000 (300*2.5).

          Or let's take a look if Valve was to reinvest some of the gaming cash cow back into gaming, how many employees it should have if it was to reinvest with a similar ratio to revenue. Against Meta, Valve should have 7,000 employees (70,000/10) or against Sony gaming, Valve should have 4,800 employees (12,000/2.5). But Valve only employs 300 people to return a 10 billion pound revenue. Revenue per employee for Valve is significantly higher than Meta and Sony. Even on a like for like comparison with Sony's gaming, Sony's revenue per employee is 2.08 million, and for Valve 33.33 million revenue per employee.

          As you can see Valve invests significantly less money back into the company the money gamers give to it, compared to Meta, and especially like for like comparison with Sony gaming. Sony makes just 2.5 times the revenue of Valve, but Sony reinvests back into gaming significantly more by employing a lot more people and funding new games. VR and PCVR could've died if left to Valve and Sony/Meta weren't around to invest. Valve couldn't even be bothered to help the vulnerable PCVR market to grow despite standing to benefit the most in the long run due to its monopoly. It released an expensive $1,000 Valve Index, and one major VR game versus Sony's many funded VR games over PSVR1 and PSVR2. E.g. If Sony funded just 10 high quality VR games, Valve should've funded 4 high quality VR to match funding v revenue (10/2.5, since Valve has 2.5 less revenue). But Valve has funded one major VR game, and Sony has funded way more than 2.5 major VR games (first party and funding 3rd party). And Meta has funded way more than the minimum 10 major VR games (since Meta makes 10x revenue than Valve, but Meta also has to spend money elsewhere than just gaming too). Then there's Valve vs Sony in non VR flat gaming investments.

          As you'll see from breakdown, Valve owners take vast majority of gamers' money spent on Steam gaming, out of gaming and into their pockets, instead of reinvesting like Sony/Meta do, despite likely to benefit in long term. Instead Valve lets other companies take the risk and do the hard work whilst it rakes it in, evening letting PCVR die as flat gaming revenue would've been enough for them. At 10 billion revenue, spending just a 100 million a year on PCVR gaming, which is just 1% of revenue, it would've done lot for PCVR. But it didn't. Not even just for a few years to solve the chicken and egg dilemma. Instead it employs just 300 people for the revenue it generates.

          • Michael Speth

            Very good analysis. I would like to say that Valve has done a lot for Linux due to their steamdeck initiative. We cannot forget that Valve is also a console manufactuer and Valve has really created the mobile PC market all the while pushing Linux to the forefront.

            For instance, the new Marvel Rivals game had Linux support DAY 1!!!!!

            I think the reality with VR is that it's pretty dead. Studios that are developing VR are generally garbage tier like Skydance. The very minority of gamers who are into VR simply don't know what good gaming is nor do they know what good vr is. So they just celebrate garbage tier title after garbage tier title.

            Sony is the only VR manufactuer that both creates solid games (My First Gran Turismo and GT7 are the best that VR has to offer with a good wheel and pedal set) and gaming focused VR hardware.

            Valve simply doesn't support Linux VR. I think the reason is that Valve didn't see the investment from PCVR (index + half life alyx) so they stopped. Linux VR is really aweful on Steam. The only way that will turn around is if Valve gives VR another go but I wouldn't expect them to do it any time soon. They are too busy with their console market.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            TL;DR: Revenue isn't income, business models impact income and available money to invest; a proper calculation needs to include all people generating revenue/income regardless of their type of employment; errors introduced in the assumption get inflated by following calculations based on them; without really knowing the details, any result has to be considered an assumption or approximation and shouldn't be treated as if it was a fact or proof.

            Not wanting to go into the whole "how big is Valve" discussion, just one important addition: Valve is estimated to make about USD 13bn a year, USD 10bn of which is the revenue Steam generates. It is unclear where the other USD 3b of revenue come from.

            Revenue isn't earnings, it is all the money going into Steam. With the exception of Valve's own games and service revenue from CS, Dota, TF etc., Valve takes a cut of 30% of all software sales/revenue, less from some large AAA publishers with huge sales. So with USB 10bn in revenue, Steam makes USD 3bn in earnings from the revenue split that actually end up at Valve, maybe a little more due to services or less due to discounts for large publishers.

            These USB 3bn obviously have to pay for things like offices, a considerate amount of data traffic and the matching Steam servers, the 336 well paid permanent employees with AFAIR on average six figure (~ USD 150K) income plus a fleet of contractors Valve uses for everything. Whatever remains after that is income and could be invested into VR or, after taxes, another yacht for Gabe Newell.

            Meta on the other hand generates revenue mostly from Facebook and Instagram ads, of which they keep 100%. AFAIR they take a 15/30%/50% split for Quest subscriptions/apps/Horizon Worlds content sales. There are also some Instagram content creator payments and other things I don't know, but overall the money comes from ads, and Meta gets almost all of it. They of course also have to pay offices, data centers, employees etc. first before the remaining income is then reinvested or taxed and distributed among share holders.

            I don't remember the numbers for SIE/PlayStation, but the vast majority of the money comes from digital software sales, roughly half of it from DLC and micro-transactions. Like with Steam revenue is split with publishers, Sony earns more from their own titles and licenses though. So your calculation comparing Meta and Steam is off by at least a factor of 3, the one to Sony probably closer to reality.

            As the whole argument is about investing back into VR, what you'd really need to compare is EBITDA (Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) per people generating revenue (employees plus contractors). And with that, your calculation would be very far off.

            Some of your statements are basically true, but you are trying to make a point with a very incorrect oversimplification using non-comparable numbers for companies with very different business models. Take a guess how valid your results will most likely be. You could be miles off or randomly right and would never know. Just taking some numbers and doing some basic calculations doesn't help if the numbers are misinterpreted and the resulting calculations wrong. So maybe at least avoid stating what is a stack of calculations based on questionable and unverified assumptions as facts.

          • Hussain X

            Thanks for the input. But I have not used the word profit/income/earnings. I used revenue. You can only calculate based on figures available to you.

            You explain the difference between revenue and earnings, then go on to discuss as if I used "earnings" to compare, then say how my calculations are wrong, misinterpreted etc. But I'm comparing against revenue not earnings.

            You go on to explain about different business models and how not taking that into account I'm also off. In my discussion I always stressed "like for like" when comparing against Sony (gaming department only which has a more similar business model), not Meta.

            You very briefly mentioned "the one to Sony probably closer to reality" then failed to acknowledge it anymore and differentiate between Meta and Sony when claiming my calculations are wrong. You just made general statements that they are wrong, not that Meta comparisons could be wrong and Sony could be right.

            Again they weren't wrong since I'm comparing against data that's available (revenue) and pointed out "like for like". Plus the revenue per employee, I only calculated it against Sony, not Meta, to point out the huge disparity between the two companies (arising because one relatively, significantly invests back into its gaming business), running similar business models. I will quote that again below:

            "Even on a like for like comparison with Sony's gaming, Sony's revenue per employee is 2.08 million, and for Valve 33.33 million revenue per employee."

            Plus there's my other calculations against Sony (employees/games funded to revenue etc).

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            TL;DR: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should." – Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

            Believe me, I REALLY appreciate someone trying to argue based on actual numbers instead of just stating opinion as fact. And you are right about only being able to work with what is available. Earnings and headcount for Sony and Meta are available though, while neither revenue nor earnings for Valve are public, these are only available as estimates.

            But my point isn't that the math or numbers are wrong. This is more of an "if you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail" issue. I can't offer a better numbers based approach than EBITDA/people myself, and wouldn't even expect that to provide particularly useful data regarding reasonable investment, because company motivation and strategy are based on more complex questions than the available money. For a number of reasons, incl. business model, typical form of employment and project type, I seriously doubt that there is a strong enough correlation between company revenue/earnings and specific decisions to allow for more than finding theoretical upper investment limits. You can derive how much a company could invest, but not whether that would make any sense, could or should be expected or used to evaluate/judge their engagement.

            You implied strong causation where other factors may be way more important. We know that for Valve projects like the Steam Deck, large parts of the company end up working on it in the final phases simply because of their low head count. This regularly delays other projects, making it less a money and more a resources issue. Which has been confirmed in numerous documentaries on their games and hardware by Valve and others. You could argue that they make enough money to hire more people to push VR, but they apparently aim to deliberately keep the company small, allowing for a flat hierarchy. They therefore never grow for any of their projects, in return giving us Valve time. So you whole argument about Valve not reinvesting Steam money, avoiding risks, letting others support VR, denying important funding and instead greedily funneling the money "into their pockets", might be completely missing the point why Valve is doing things the way it does.

            Valve is very different from Meta, where according to Wikipedia, advertising generates 97.8% of the revenue. Which they use to pay for MRL with at one time 10K employees burning through USD 10bn a year with often competing, redundant projects, just to see what sticks. That's a strategic decision, because Meta is the church of fast growth with the aim to dominate. Not necessarily the best way things are supposed to work or will provide the most long term benefit for all. Where Valve aims to make SteamOS available to competitors, Meta bough competitors as long as regulators allowed it. Sony again has different goals, even conflicting ones between different departments.

            All this makes comparing them, their investments, motivations or intentions for VR based just on revenue highly questionable, and that should be made very, very clear when presenting the results of any calculation. Which is why I wrote that the results are off instead of wrong: they don't represent what you assume they do. We get very little data to work with and often rely on secondary sources to derive numbers, which is still better than nothing. But calculations based on that should be limited to a few steps due to the danger of self-amplifying errors, with large disclaimers attached regarding doubts about the overall validity. I neither doubted the correctness of the numbers you used or the math, only the assumptions it is based on and your interpretation of the results.

          • kakek

            Are ViRGIN’s new alt ?
            Kudos on rebranding as more reasonable.

    • MeowMix

      https://media0.giphy.com/media/yt9DTQeflOUA8/giphy-downsized-small.mp4
      Notice how he mentions zero 1st party titles in the works

    • Rupert Jung

      >Sony officialy supports the PSVR2

      They pretty much never did. No deals with Meta to remaster their PC games (Lone Echo, Stormland, Asgard's Wrath…), no Halfe-Life Alyx, not even remasters of their own (!) PSVR1 titles.

      • Michael Speth

        You don't understand what "support" means.

        • Rupert Jung

          >You don't understand what "support" means.

          Well. developing games for it or at least reaching of for them. It's a closed game console.

  • Arno van Wingerde

    I just ordered a PS5pro+PSVR2, since I see a decent number of games, much @disqus_vltekyumwg:disqus called trash Quest games (his words, not mine), which look better on PSVR2 than on Quest. Whether that plus the OLED screens is enough to compensate for the cable, the small sweet spot, the earbuds etc. remains to be seen, I returned an earlier batch out of frustration… but at the same time, sometimes I want more power than the Quest3 offers, without a 2000 $/€ PC with all the updates and mods issues. Games like Horizon, no man' s sky, Resident Evil, Grand Turismo, heck even a more beautiful version of Kayak just might be worth it.
    The PS5pro has about the power of a 4070. Combine that with foveated rendering and it would be hard to top with even the heaviest PC. Of course, the latter has mods, but that is something I consider a mixed blessing.

    • BadHostile

      These are not my words either, but the words of the person I was responding to. For me, it doesn't matter whether the game was created with Quest in mind or not and whether it influenced the graphics, what matters to me is the quality of the game itself.

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    This is still the aftermath of PlayStation CEO and known VR hater Jim Ryan leaving Sony in March, who launched PSVR2 at a ridiculous, self-sabotaging price. There obviously were clever people inside Sony wanting VR to succeed with a hybrid game strategy, by making VR modes financially/technically viable through VR-specific optimizations.

    Instead of huge investments for VR-only titles targeting a limited audience, which failed on all VR platforms, AAA hybrid games adding 5-10% development costs only need to sell 5-10% more, doable with PSVR1 already selling to ~6% of all PS4 users. But it's a long term strategy, relying on VR integration into AAA with multi-year development cycles. And selling enough PSVR2 to get publishers interested became a pipe dream when it was priced higher than the PS5.

    Success is still possible, and the USD 350 HCotM bundle a good start. It's even better than the short sale preceeding the PC adapter launch, selling record numbers of USD 350 PSVR2 in July despite missing features on PC, and already hinting at a strategy change after a grace period following Ryan's departure. Apparently a (successful) test that led to an improved BF bundle launched earlier and now extended. We should see similar bundles for Christmas, and a permanent price drop soon.

    Last week "No Man's Sky" reached a "Very Positive" rating on Steam, eight years after a disastrous start at "Mostly Negative", and earned by listening to users and releasing lots of fixes and updates. If Hello Games can do it, Sony can too with PSVR2 and hybrid games.

    • Leisure Suit Barry

      If you want a good laugh, go read the PS Blog and the PSVR sub-reddit when the price was revealed, people actually thought it would sell out day one of the 2M units made at that price, they thought scalpers would buy it up and it would be hard to get hold of one for a year or two like PS5 was.

      Gotta wonder how people are so delusional.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        Apparently Sony's pre-order website included a waiting list feature in case the PSVR2 would indeed sell out, which was never triggered due to low sales. This may be just a standard feature for any such system in case of unexpected demand, but there is a chance that at least some people at Sony expected to sell a lot more.

        I can only assume that they saw people buying PS5 during the CoViD shortages for insane amounts of money from scalpers and therefore tried to pull an Nvidia by significantly raising the prices, hoping people would pay anything since they wouldn't have an alternative. If that was indeed the rationalization (all other reasons I can think of boil down to either sabotage or insanity), it fell flat on its face. Partly because PSVR2 launched long after the pandemic related component shortages were mostly resolved, prices returned to more sane levels and scalpers a smaller problem.

        The good laugh/cry options continued when shortly after the launch, Bloomberg reported that Sony was cutting internal sales predictions by half in response to disappointing preorders, and would therefore lower production in the future. Which Sony countered by a non-denial denial, stating that they hadn't cut production YET, not actually addressing the reduced predictions and future cut that Bloomberg had reported. As this happened before the actual launch, it was kind of obvious they were still producing new PSVR2 to be ready to deliver the preordered units and any change would only happen in the future.

        Sony fans would have none of that. Preorders were obviously spectacular, Bloomberg, a longtime high reputation news source, obviously incompetent, and the author of the report on the reduced predictions and production someone known to systematically attack Sony, on a personal mission to destroy PSVR2. I got a lot of flak just for pointing out that Sony never actually contradicted Bloomberg's report. And of course it all turned out to be true.

        • Leisure Suit Barry

          Yep, PSVR2 went from invite pre-order only to anyone can pre-order due to the lack of interest.

          Rumours of 2M units made for launch period and we're about 2M sold now going by estimates, which is tracking behind PSVR1 sales.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            Which is such a waste, since the PSVR2 is actually a very clever design and Sony's hybrid game strategy the most realistic approach to get AAA VR games, basically UEVR done right and only requiring an RTX 2070 instead of an RTX 4080.

            All messed up by stupid business policy. Fortunately policy can be changed, and I really hope that Sony will do this now. RE8/4 and GT7 proved how great the PSVR2 (hybrid) experience can be if it gets the needed support.

    • ApocalypseShadow

      Your comments usually come off as intelligent but this one is pure speculation with no facts. Just dressed up to look like it's informative.

      Jim Ryan believed that VR has a ways to go before saturation n console. More than a few minutes to success. He spoke of this before we even knew what the second headset looked like and name. He still believed in the tech. Go read his interviews with GQ or Games Industry Biz or whatever floats your boat. Instead of posting nonsense.

      COVID pushed everything back. Flat game releases and VR. First it was getting hardware into gamers hands and developing games not necessarily in the offices. And the new Sony didn't want to lose money like they did with the PS3. So, everything was priced to profit sooner rather than later after release.

      If Sony's main developers like Naughty Dog, Guerilla, Santa Monica, Sucker Punch, etc have games coming out way late in the game or without any hint of what they are working on, then it stands to reason that VR is also delayed. Even if they released quality VR games like GT7 and Horizon.

      The price was definitely a factor but we all know, including you, that eye tracking and the tech in the PS VR 2 isn't cheap. And they aren't willing to take heavy losses. Now, thru can drop the price to move some units. Will it sell 10 million in a year? No. But Sony already knows that.

      The difference is that Sony, unlike Facebook, isn't willing to spend half the company's worth to push VR. Sure Facebook can burn 50 billion dollars to try and beat Apple and Google to the next paradigm. Sony is not going to do that. That's just common sense looking at it. Would it be nice to have more first party games? Yeah. Of course. Or even port Blood and Truth, Wipeout, Astrobot to PS5 and add all the bells and whistles. That's my beef with them. But to say he was known to hate VR is total BS. Did you speak with him directly? Of course not. Because you posted the hot air you posted.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        but we all know, including you, that eye tracking and the tech in the PS VR 2 isn't cheap.

        Nope. You can go back to any of my comments on PSVR2, even before the price was announced, and you'll find me stating that the hardware is designed to be cheap to produce. I actually predicted that Sony might sell it for USD 249 to counter Quest 2 at USD 299, and wouldn't even have to subsidize it for that. I posted by-comparison BOMs with component price estimates (cheap OLED with the same specs as Sony's Xperia phones, simple SoC as the PS5 does most of the work, cheap Fresnel, no audio, cheap USB-C connection, advanced haptics using only slightly more expensive LRAs).

        Also dozens of comments explaining again and again that eye tracking hardware is only a couple of cheap nIR LEDs, cheap lowres nIR tracking cameras connected to the SoC, and optionally cheap mirrors, probably less than USD 15 in components for Sony. You can add DIY eye tracking to any HMD with ESP32-CAM modules for less than USD 20 total with the free EyeTrackVR firmware. The expensive parts are the compute heavy motion estimation running on the PS5, and the development/license for Tobii's eye tracking software. For which I also provided upper limits based on the companies value. The idea that eye tracking hardware is expensive is a misinterpretation of Tobii selling eye tracking modules for USD 249. That price isn't due to the components, but due to these being a niche product selling to a professional market in small numbers, requiring very high margins to make back the development costs.

        My PSVR2 build cost estimates were roughly confirmed by teardowns.The PSVR2 was way cheaper to produce than Quest 2, and the USD 550 fucking stupid. Which I also stated dozens of times with the same explanation as above.

        Sony has sold hardware with profit since PS4, but with very different margins for consoles vs peripherals. The consoles themselves sell with very little profit, esp. at the beginning to get people hooked, while peripherals like controllers sell for 3-4x their production cost. Price policy is of course up to Sony, and they could have decided to make back all development costs with limited hardware sales. But setting the PSVR2 retail price to more than twice the built cost and above PS5 was obviously never going to fly, dooming the HMD to fail, meaning they'd never make back the development costs. Which I also stated in my comments to the price announcement.

        The fact that they now sucessfully sell PSVR2 incl. HCotM for USD 350 should be proof enough that the hardware doesn't cost anywhere as much as Sony apologists assume. Sony fucked up, which was a collosal management failure. And with rumors that PSVR2 was only released because Sony Japan's movie devision intervened to keep Sony in the XR market for media consumption when Ryan tried to shut it down, the idea that Ryan tried to price poison-pill the PSVR2 he wasn't allowed to kill in the first place isn't that far fetched. That would allow to kill the PSVR2 later because it unfortunately was a financial flop. He of course wasn't allowed to publically diss PSVR, so we got vague, non-commital statements that probably cost a lot of developer support. Not adding PSVR1 compatibility layers when the software was already there, but only supporting PSVR1 hardware, then also not porting the most popular PSVR1 titles, basically erased the existing software library. That and neither offering attractive bundles for the first holiday season nor launching any noticeable add campaigns also looked like either gross management incompetence or deliberate negligence.

        Can I prove that because I have a written confession by Ryan that he deliberately torpedoed the PSVR he inheritted from his predecessor? No. But if Sony now basically makes a u-turn, lowers the price, actually promotes PSVR2 and the hybrid strategy it very obviously was designed for, that may be an indicator that the strategy under Ryan was crap, either deliberately or due to incompetence. As Ryan managed to lead the rest of PlayStation to great success, I doubt that the problem was incompetence.

        • ApocalypseShadow

          Jim Ryan did what a CEO is supposed to do: make money. Not lose money. Anyone that has worked in business or retail knows that products are marked up to make profit. Sony didn't want to take heavy losses selling at cost or lower on PS5 or PS VR 2. That's just from observation. They clearly stated again and again that they made record profits on PS5. Who was in charge of Sony during these record profits? That's Jim Ryan's job. To make the company money. Even during the pandemic. The same person that signed off to release PS VR 2 on the market instead of canceling it. Yeah. That's hating it alright. The same person that was asked by the community to make high quality online games to coincide with their single player games but then got bashed for trying. Because online games today are service games of road maps and constant updates. Crazy funny that the same community that bashed Sony for trying bought over 12 million of Hell Divers 2. Tacked on multiplayer is no longer a thing with gamers constantly wanting new content. That's the definition of a service game. Just like GT7 is.

          You say eye tracking is cheap. Then why doesn't Quest 3 have it if it's so cheap? Because on observation, Facebook knows that the cost of the device would have to be sold higher than it is now. I mean, Quest 3, as good as it is, is struggling to sell in high numbers at $500. We don't see Facebook announcing sales like they did with Quest 2. Now why is that if they are so confident? Even Quest 3S had to have major deals with games and $75 give aways to move it. If the devices were in such high demand, they wouldn't have to do that.

          I'm well aware that Sony built PS VR 2 to handle bigger games. But Sony never mentioned hybrid to anyone. Only Brian from without parole ran with that. No other outlet spoke of it. And hybrid games could have been the strategy. Less hardware load by using eye tracking. Which is something PC should have had as standard so you wouldn't need a powerful graphics card to get into high level PC VR. It's not cheap. Or every PC VR headset would have it too. They don't.

          As for PC, Jim did more for PS VR 2 than Gabe Newell did for PC VR. I hope you're not giving Gabe a pass. If Valve only released one high quality game, then Sony, under Jim, released TWO high quality games while supporting Capcom in making RE4 Remake and RE8 exclusive. Even Synapse is exclusive. Kinda funny that Sony and Jim gets bashed but you don't see Capcom pushing those titles on Quest 3. Not even willing to downgrade those games because stand alone is in such high demand. Gabe must hate VR more than Jim going by your definition.

          They have dropped the price. It may sell enough to do more with it or not. But Sony as a business, is still riding all the way to the bank on royalties from 3rd parties in and out of VR. I would love for them to make more VR games to sell their own headset. Same thing I bashed Microsoft for having VR developers but making no games for their partner VR headsets. And if we were looking at Facebook, they only made two high quality VR games. Wrath 2 and Batman. Just like Sony. Care to bash them and Zuckerberg while you're at it for not making more? Because Iron Man was a hand me down from PSVR.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            TL;DR: SIE CEO Ryan was a VR "hater" because he sabotaged it against Sony Group's XR strategy that was forced upon him; Quest 3 has no eye tracking because the cost of running the SOFTWARE is too high, not the hardware; Sony held a closed door developer conference in early 2021 to introduce the hybrid strategy to developers

            1) Ryan wasn't the CEO of all of Sony, but the CEO of SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment), which is a subsidiary of Sony Group Cooperation. Which is the reason why there even was someone who could interfere with his decisions. Ryan no doubt was a good CEO and led SIE/PlayStation to new records, making them a lot of money. Making money is an important, but not the only job of a CEO. Others are executing company strategy, supporting company values etc.

            There apparently was a clash with Ryan seeing VR as not yet ready to be a mainstream technology, making PSVR a loss and therefore bad for earnings, and other parts of Sony that acknowledged that PSVR was generating loss, but wanted to keep it for strategic reasons. That's quite normal, Zuckerberg can only get away with investing USD 100bn into VR because he holds 60% of the vote at Meta. Others like former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe didn't believe as much that mobile VR was the best/only way to go, but were overruled by upper management/Zuckerberg, causing Iribe to leave once Meta canceled the higher end Rift 2 PCVR HMD.

            The reason why I label Ryan a VR "hater" is not because he had some personal irrational animosity towards VR, but because he apparently was forced by upper Sony management to support it due of external demands that would effectively cost SIE a lot of money with very little chance to make it back anytime soon, like all of VR. So he signed off on PSVR2, because he had to execute Sony company strategy, but then did a number of things like the ridiculous pricing, the non-committal statements for years, his public statements that VR might be years from becoming interesting just around the PS5 launch and all the other little things like the missing backwards compatibility, not even porting Astro Bot, lacking ad campaigns etc. He did enough to formally execute Sony's wishes to continue PSVR regardless of it not making money, buy on the other hand actively reduced its chances of success though a number of delays/decisions, thereby effectively sabotaging the overall Sony Group VR strategy. Hence VR hater.

            2) I clearly stated (above and many times before) that eye tracking HARDWARE is cheap, and that the expensive part is the "compute heavy motion estimation" SOFTWARE. Which is very likely the main reason why Quest 3 doesn't feature it, but Quest 4 most likely will. Motion estimation is needed because for ETFR we need to know where the eyes will look in the NEXT frame, but can only measure where they looked at the current/previous frame due to latency.

            A compute heavy "motion estimation" software part first showed up in the Tobii PC software for Vive Pro Eye, still with significant latency, causing bad artifacts. There is a connection between available computational power, the quality of the prediction and the resulting gains from dynamic foveated rendering. Quest Pro had ETFR, but only got 33%-45% extra performance, depending on the level of artifacts, while PSVR2 on the much faster PS5 saves 72% without noticeable artifacts. More computation/power draw isn't a problem on a console, but a huge problem on a mobile platform due to limited power/head. On Quest Pro the actual gains from ETFR usually aren't worth it, because it both drains the battery and prohibits apps from running at the highest possible CPU performance level. The official main use for eye tracking on Quest Pro was proper avatar gaze direction in Horizon Workrooms without dynamic foveated rendering. The actual main use is gaze direction in VRChat.

            Which is why Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth stated multiple times that ETFR makes no sense yet on Quest. AVP needed eye tracking, as its whole UI is based on it, and ETFR to handle the 3.5K displays. To handle the load it adds the very powerful R1 signal processor doing all the tracking in parallel to the already powerful M2, giving AVP a much higher power draw. PSVR2 needed eye tracking, because its most important feature is being able to run flat 4K AAA games also in VR despite the much higher rendering load, which simply wouldn't be possible without ETFR allowing for almost four times the frame rate. As in contrast to PCs the PS5 GPU speed is fixed, a hybrid strategy cannot work without VR specific optimizations like ETFR.

            Quest 3 lacking eye tracking is mostly about it not being able to actually utilize it due to both lacking an UI that integrates it, or a SoC fast enough to allow for significant performance gains. Eye tracking hardware would add a little weight and cost, but mostly complexity. On Quest Pro it required an extra daughter board with a tiny SoC to merge video streams, because the XR2 SoC didn't have enough direct connections for two extra eye tracking cameras, and the overall results were rather disappointing for the users. Quest 4 will most certainly feature eye tracking, because after AVP everyone will start to integrate it for UI. And maybe the Quest 4 SoC will be fast enough to also make ETFR useful.

            3) Sony introduced the hybrid strategy to developers during a closed door conference in early 2021, two years prior to the launch of PSVR2 (www_roadtovr_com/report-next-gen-psvr-2-games-specs), though launch partners like Konami no doubt knew about it beforehand. Two years headstart isn't a lot of time considering that AAA development cycles are now more like 4-6 years. My dirty conspiracy mind might therefore say that someone in management deliberately delayed passing that information to most developers, so there wouldn't be enough time to integrate a VR mode into many already running AAA projects before the HMD launch, causing users to believe that the platform was a failure due to the lack of AAA games.

          • Michael Speth

            The most sound and reasonable discussion about Sony, it's CEO and making money. Thank you for what is so uncommon on these forums and in the VR bubble in general.

            I think most Meta Owners simply don't understand the real cost of owning this device. Meta loses billions (BILLIONS) per month on VR. That can only mean Meta is selling their devices at a loss (there is no WAY R&D costs billions per month).

            A company that is willing to sell their devices at a lose over long term doesn't have faith in their own products. Not only that, but because Meta cannot even sell the Quest devices at cost, that means the value of the quest devices is less than the sum of the parts. That is why I consistantly call meta devices GARBAGE.

      • Dragon Marble

        Open your eyes. When Ryan was CEO, developers complained that the cost of porting games to PSVR2 could not be justified. Now he's gone, developers report games selling better on PSVR2 than Quest!

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          One reason for games selling better on PSVR2 will be that many paid USD 1000+ (with PS5) of their own money for it, making them capable/willing to also buy games. A lot of Quest were given as presents to teens, who tend to buy even less games than the already reluctant average Quest user, and often stick to only free games like Gorilla Tag. Which is why Meta tries to push their Quest+ app subscription.

          For similar reasons many developers release only ads supported games on Android despite its >70% market share, as most users never buy a single app. Way fewer iPhone users generate a lot more gaming revenue, because those who can afford an expensive phone are also more willing to pay for apps or mirco-transactions.

          PSVR2 could attract developers with a much smaller active user base than Quest, if those are actually buying games. Even more so with AAA hybrid games going for USD 60/70. Asgard's Wrath 2 (USD 60) dropped out of the Quest Top 20 the moment the free bundling with Quest 3 ended. And if some already make more money on PSVR2 despite so far much smaller unit sales, something like the USD 350 HCotM bundle could help a lot by both increasing the number of game buyers and showing that Sony still cares.

        • ApocalypseShadow

          It couldn't be justified just like any device that has to sell in high numbers to get more support. Can't sell blades without more razors sold. Business 101. You're stating the obvious.

          Not every developer is reporting that games sell more on PS VR 2 than Quest. And has nothing to do with Jim retiring. And more to the fact that more headsets have sold. You're being ridiculous.

          But gamers need a scapegoat. So continue to ride that bandwagon with no actual facts. When you get an interview with Jim, let me know. And I'll read it.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            Not related to the discussion, but

            Can't sell blades without more razors sold.

            is pretty much the worst example you could pick.

            The safety razor with disposable blades was invented (and patented) around 1900 by King C. Gillette with the primary goal to create a product that would force customers to for their whole life very regularly buy replacement parts. Allowing his company to sell an endless amount of blades without having to sell more razors.

            Naming pretty much any other product leading to follow-up sales would have supported your argument better.

      • Leisure Suit Barry

        Compared to Quest, there isn't much tech in the PSVR2 and yet it's more expensive.

        No processor, ram, hard drive, battery, built-in audio etc

        It's obvious Sony saw the demand of PS5 (artificial due to lockdown) and got delusions of grandeur, so they gave PSVR2 a stupidly high price thinking everyone was in love with Playstation.

        The management let the artificial demand for PS5 go to it's head, heck they even thought Concord would be a smash hit and their own 'Star Wars franchise'

        • ApocalypseShadow

          More speculation. And no facts.

          Quest is basically an Android phone built into a viewer. No eye tracking. No haptics. No headset haptics. No OLED like PS VR 2. I like Quest. But let's be real. Having other features than another headset doesn't mean it should or could be cheaper.

          Concord was ripped apart before it even released by gamers. Sony tried to offer more online games that they thought gamers would buy. That's the risk you take in trying. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. And no. It wasn't to be their Star Wars. Maybe if Naughty Dog were making Savage Starlight. But gamers definitely wanted online as they bought 12 million plus of Hell Divers 2 but claim they hate online service games. And seem fine with GT7. An online service game.

          Gamers complain that Sony aren't remaking or remastering Resistance or Killzone. But they'll also turn around and bash Sony for that same thing of not offering anything new and just releasing remakes and remasters. Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.

          • Leisure Suit Barry

            Speculation? It is fact that PSVR2 doesn’t have a SOC, RAM, hard drive, battery, built-in audio

            PSVR2 is a spectacular failure, Sony produced 2M units for the launch period and we’ve only just got to 2M sold now, it’s tracking behind PSVR1 sales.

            Pre-orders were invite only but due to the lack of interest they were opened up to everyone.

            The only first party games are Horizon and GT7, both launch games, with no first party games announced since.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            The PSVR2 does have a SoC, RAM, some flash, no battery, no audio. SoC just means system-on-a-chip, meaning a chip integrating things like CPU, GPU, North and South bridge, Wifi etc. And anything containing a display connected to a computer that isn't an old CRT connected via VGA or another analog cable needs one, as all digital signals first have to be received by a protocol, extracted, stored in the frame buffer of a display controller that then controls the display itself. Only with old CRTs the display controller effectively was part of the GPU in the computer.

            The PSVR2 SoC does a lot more, as it can do head tracking and most likely also controller and room tracking all by itself. When connected to a digital video source, it can take the image and properly project it inside the PSVR2 so it again appears as a large rectangle with head tracking, basically a rudimentary virtual cinema. This requires a 3D capable onboard GPU. It also handles all the communication with the controllers and haptics and sensors connected via USB as well as the cameras, probably doing some passthrough-preprocessing, and the communication with the PS5.

            It is a lot smaller and nowhere as powerful as an XR2 SoC though, and comes only with a low amount of RAM and flash. AFAIR it is produced by MediaTek for Sony and integrates a Tobii EyeChip with undetermined function, also found in the Pimax Crystal .

            And stating that PSVR2 is a specular failure is a little premature considering that the article is titled "PSVR 2 Black Friday Sale is Still Going Strong After 20x Spike in Sales Volume". They certainly messed up the launch, but in one way or another that is true for most of VR, and we aren't at the finish line yet. Not even close.

          • Leisure Suit Barry

            PSVR2 does not have a SOC as in a CPU/GPU

            PSVR1 sold 3M after 22 months. PSVR2 has sold around 2M after 22 months, it’s a catastrophic sales flop.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            SoC = System on a chip. There is not "SoC as in …"

            Every SoC contains a CPU, otherwise it is only a co-processor that needs to be connected to a separate CPU, not a SoC. GPUs, FPUs, NPUs can't work alone, though some like modern (GP)GPUs have all the features that would allow to use them as (very inefficient) CPUs, and many ASICs are like 1% CPU and 99% DSP.

            And as mentioned above, the PSVR2 SoC has a GPU, as it performs transformations even when not connected to a PS5. To be precise, it then maps a rectangular texture taken from a decoded DP signal received via USB-C using DP Alt mode onto a quad perspective/parallax corrected in stereo with added cushion correction for geometric distortion introduced by the Fresnel lenses, usually done via shaders, projected according to 3DoF rotation data read from the integrated IMU. The reading sensors/protocols parts are done by the CPU. That's what every VR HMD has to do to correctly display geometry projected to a 2D display and looked at through two lenses, and you cannot do this without a 3D capable GPU in real time.

            PSVR2 sold way more than Varjo XR-4, so the Varjo XR-4 must be a catastrophic sales flop.
            Both Quest 3 and 3S sold way less than Quest 2 during the previous holiday season, so they must be catastrophic sales flops.

            Or not.

            SoCs vary in capabilities and price, therefore their features and use case has to be considered when comparing them. PSVR2 having a SoC doesn't automatically mean it can do even what a Quest 1 could do, and the operations describe above are very basic for even the slowest smartphone GPU. A car will have dozens of SoCs, none of which will run VR games.

            Different headsets sell for different prices at different times generating different amounts of revenue and follow up sales and show different amounts of engagement and retention.

            I actually agree with you in principle, it's just not all a yes/no, black/white question. PSVR2 sold a lot less than it could have due to IMO stupid decisions, and got a lot less games fully utilizing it than hoped. But it most certainly isn't dead, sales very clearly started to increase, and we will see more games in the future. Whether it will be more ore less successful than PSVR1 in the long run, we will know when PSVR3 is released.

            Until then things can still change a lot. Sony could offer the same software features on PC that they offer on PS5 (ETFR, haptics, HDR). And then the money users could save from needing a less expensive GPU or being able to use their existing one alone might pay for much of the USD 350. Which would certainly impact whether PSVR2 ends up a catastrophic sales flop in the future.

            I wouldn't even bother if you qualified you statements properly with "so far" or "low performance SoC", instead of making a generalized claim as if time had already stopped or PSVR 2 contained only plastic. What you are hinting at is (so far) correct, but what you are actually saying is incorrect.

          • Leisure Suit Barry

            Varjo isn’t it’s own platform like PSVR2 is, so sales of individual PCVR headsets don’t matter.

            There is no doubt that PSVR2 sales are catastrophic, even if they sold more for PCVR, that doesn’t help the PSVR2 platform, just like selling Quest headsets for PC doesn’t help the Quest platform

            PSVR1 sold around 6M by the end, looks like PSVR2 will be less than that, it’s not enough to sustain a platform.

  • Leisure Suit Barry

    Like I've said all along, Sony killed the PSVR2 with the price, it was always going to be DOA.

  • GoGreenGameOn

    Later PS VR1s came boxed with the camera adaptor required for use on PS5 (as well as being a hardware-revised headset). I wonder if any new PS VR2 SKUs might have inherent PC connectivity without the need for an adaptor, or perhaps it will ship with a cheaper adaptor with/without Bluetooth built-in, in the box.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      AFAIK Sony recently stopped offering the adapter to connect PSVR1 to PS5 at least for free, or maybe even at all. Wearing my wildly over-optimistic pink tinted glasses, there is a glimmer of hope that they might now instead add a software compatibility layer that emulates the missing features (mostly the track pad) of the 6DoF tracked PS4 DualShock controller.

      These were used in a number of VR games like RE7 to bring up the map, and could be mapped to other controls/input combinations on the PSVR2 Sense controllers. That would make connecting the old hardware and adapter obsolete and could open (most of) the PSVR1 software library to all PSVR2 users. Which shouldn't even be difficult to implement, as the PS5 can already run PSVR1 games, meaning the needed software is already there, but so far it only works when connecting the original PSVR via the adapter.

      [Disclaimer: The above this is just wild speculation based on how easy it would be to add compatibility, with added wishful thinking from hoping that Sony is now indeed changing their PSVR2 strategy. I have no indication whatsoever, not even rumors, that they are actually working on adding backwards compatibility requiring only the PSVR2 Sense controllers.]

      And the PC adapter is already optional on PCs with a GPU featuring a USB-C port capable of using the DisplayPort Alt mode. Which besides a number of gaming laptops unfortunately were only Nvidia RTX 20X0 Founders Edition and AMD RX 6X00 reference cards. But we should see more in the future due to USB-C increasingly being used for display connections, for example on all Macs from the last few years.

      It is unlikely that Sony will ever release a (technically worse) PSVR2 for PC that ends in a split DP/HDMI plus USB3 cable. But the current adapter should be rather cheap to produce, far below USD 20. So if they are serious about now pushing PSVR2 also on PC, and hopefully reduce the price of the HMD itself to a more competitive level, they could easily also lower the price of the adapter to half of the current USD 60 if they wanted.

  • eadVrim

    PSVR2 is blurry for those who suffer from myopia. And It is affected by this more than any other VR headdet.
    I solved it by using my Q3 prescribed lenses with kind of temporary stickers additive, and now yes it become very sharper with nice colors, very bright. And by far the best consumer headset for MFS.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      Could you provide the strength of you prescribed lenses? I suffer from mild myopia, with glasses at -1.25 diopters, and noticed a big difference between different headsets. For example the CV1 required me to wear glasses for a sharp image, while the Quest doesn't.

      I found a statement by John Carmack that they had "finally" adjusted the fixed focus of their headsets from about 200cm/80" distance to 150cm/60" on either Quest 1 or 2. Which is within the gap my eyes still see clearly, despite inevitable biological doom continuously reducing our eye's focusing range from around 17 diopters for juveniles to less than 1 diopter for those above 75.

      All this could be prevented by letting users adjust the lens-display distance like some HMDs already do, though extra glasses would still be required for issues like axis correction. As enough people need to wear glasses and this seems such an easy to implement comfort feature, I'm still trying to figure out why it isn't more common.

      One somewhat far fetched theory is that allowing users to adjust the distance could interfere with eye tracking, as for example HTC warns that high myopia reduces the accuracy of eye tracking, and Tobii a few years ago stated that their eye tracking only worked for about 95% of the users due to varying refractive errors in people's eyes. So a second question would be if you noticed any difference in tracking quality after adding the lenses, if they even cover the tracking cameras seated around the original lenses.

      • eadVrim

        Me, -1, -1.
        Without theses prescribed lenses I can't use PSVR2, it was extra blurry than any orher headset I had (Q3, Reberb G2, Rift S…), but when I use lenses the image become sharper even comparable to Q3 display.

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          Which would hint that the fixed focus on PSVR2 is set to a larger distance than on Quest etc. Which adds another entry to my "Why did they do that?" list.

        • Arno van Wingerde

          I use prescription lenses for both Quest3 and PSVR2, since I have something like -8 and cylinder correction -2 as well. Playing with glasses in a VR headset sounds like masochism to me…

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            It will depend a lot on the actual prescription. It took me a while to figure out that CV1 looked sharper with glasses on, and I had to check several times because the Fresnel lenses and low resolution added most of the blurriness. My glasses are rather slim, so besides the visible frame, the main comfort issue when worn inside the headset was the arms being pressed against the side of my head. Most of the time I simply used CV1 without them, accepting the slightly increased fuzziness.

            I usually wear my glasses only while driving, and apparently have very long and greasy lashes that quickly leave a layer of smear on close HMD lenses, thereby adding even more blur. As I try to get my eyes as close as possible to the lenses to increase FoV, adding even a few millimeter of extra glass would make this much worse. Which is why I avoid prescription inserts. I also never could handle contacts, so I am now hoping for integrated diopter adjustment like in the MeganeX Superlight for the moment my eyes no longer can focus onto the fixed distance used by HMDs.

            As so many other ergonomics issues, it boils down to different users needing different solution, and "one size fits all" being an illusion. The current "one size fits the majority" HMDs leave the remaining minority searching for add-on solutions or hacks to make them usable. In this case it's more a "one fixed focus length fits all" problem.

  • david vincent

    Remove the mura and add a 72hz mode and I'm in.

    • eadVrim

      Cause od mura why you don't see SDE on it (PSVR2 has lower resolution with pentile oled).
      I prefer mura than SDE, because I can neglige more.

      • david vincent

        Plenty of other headsets have none of them

        • eadVrim

          Quest 1 Oled, HTC pro vive Oled have Screen Door Effect instead, cause both their resolution is not enough

          • david vincent

            Those are old headsets, of course they have SDE.
            Look at the last Pico and Meta headsets instead.

  • flynnstigator

    I’m glad to see PSVR2 doing better despite management mishandling detailed in Christian Schildwaechter’s post. Sony is actually positioned very well in the coming VR landscape if they only cared to exploit that position.

    The problem with PCVR is that it’s so demanding and not user-friendly. No one really knows whether their PC can handle it until they’ve already spent the money, and software incompatibilities and driver issues are truly terrible. I can’t tell you how many hours and dollars I spent getting Assetto Corsa to look good and run well, for instance. I did deep forum dives on settings, I subscribed to modders on Patreon to get the latest preview versions of their custom shaders, I bought multiple USB cables, I replaced my router, etc. You show most people a plug-and-play device that looks just as good in many cases without having to go through any of that crap, and you’ve got a winner.

    They’re only really missing a couple of things that should be included in the next version:
    1. Make it wireless. People who go wireless don’t go back.
    2. Give it an SoC. If Sony’s HMD could run stand-alone games at similar fidelity as the latest Meta headset, and then connect to the PS5/6/x for PCVR-level graphics without any of the nonsense that PCVR users have to go through, they would have a huge advantage.

    For the SoC, they can choose to go ARM or x86. An XR2 Gen x would allow for easy porting of existing Quest and Pico games, and they could basically copy Guy Godin’s homework on how to get the SoC to perform upscaling and frame doubling, taking the load off the PS5. They would have to buy the XR2’s from Qualcomm, though, so they might choose to buy something like AMD’s Strix Point or a successor, since they already buy their console APU’s from them. That would be dicier in terms of getting lots of developers to port their stand-alone games, but Sony has enough clout and users that they could probably succeed where the likes of Pico, Pimax, HTC, and others have failed. The important thing is that it can’t be a separate store, and developers can’t opt-out of crossbuy like on Meta’s store. If you buy a PS game that has a stand-alone HMD version, you own both versions, period. Maybe even give huge discounts if people can prove they own a game on another platform. Own Moss Books I and II on Quest? Pay us $5 and you get an equivalent version on PSVR and automatically get the full PS5/6/x version, too.

    I don’t see how anyone could compete with Sony if they did that. Meta can’t compete on high-end, low-hassle visuals and a lot of people will ditch the Zuck platform the second anyone else offers a compelling product (I know that’s not a popular comment around here, but I promise it’s true). Microsoft’s VR has always a punchline. Valve can’t offer an integrated experience without driver updates, incompatibilities, and other headaches. Everyone else is an also-ran.

    We’re still in VR’s early years, so Sony can still get it right and leave the pricing stumble behind. If they do, I’ll buy a console for the first time in decades. I was ready to buy a PS5 until I saw the PSVR2’s pricing and knew it would be dead in the water.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      TL;DR: Wireless so far adds reliability issues and costs, but might be an option on PS6; stand-alone use on a PSVR3 is unlikely though due to cost and battery life issues, as a simpler streaming-only SoC comes with a bunch of mostly power related benefits that could give Sony several advantages over the Quest.

      My guess is that Sony went with a tethered PSVR2 both due to cost and reliability. Reduced image quality and increased latency from streaming might also be a factor, but to run flat AAA in VR, PSVR2 relies on heavily (fixed/dynamic) foveated rendering and reprojection that can introduce a number of artifacts, so the design goal wasn't the highest visual fidelity.

      The cost argument is somewhat harder to explain, as I am still confused by the high price, when the hardware design was apparently optimized for low production costs. The need for a battery might be the main issue. Using an SoC capable of receiving a video stream via Wifi wouldn't be much more expensive, and even the now ancient 2016 SD821 in the Oculus Go with a 1440p display will happily let you play a 4K 2160p PCVR stream in the Go's VirtualDesktop app. I ran through Skyrim VR on the Go for a couple of hours using an Xbox controller, mostly because I could.

      The main issue with wireless is still reliability, or to be more precise, the difficulty of quickly fixing a problem for non-technical users. With different types of WiFi, routers, channels, traffic collisions in densely populated areas due to overlapping networks, and metal objects blocking transmission, resolving wireless network issues can easily enter the same messy area as the PCVR config issues you describe, where users need to become experts just to fix basic issues. So for PSVR2 sticking to a literally plug'n'play cable solution IMHO made a lot of sense. Esp. if Sony expected most of the games to be played to be AAA titles with VR modes like RE8 or GT7, that a large number of players will play seated in VR.

      There might be a number of options for going wireless on PS6, but I'd expect them to go with a low performance SoC optimized only for streaming, in contrast to your second wish not capable of running Quest ports standalone. Partly because of cost, as Qualcomm has increased the price for their top-of-the-line SoC by roughly USD 40 each year since the SD8 Gen 1, making those chips now rather expensive.

      But mostly because the high end ARM chips lose many of their advantages compared to x86 when used for VR. The ARM architecture is great for mobile applications due to their very low power modes, which is why current phones come with four different types of cores from high performance to low power. They basically wake up the cores for short burst activities, then quickly drop back to very low idle power consumption, allowing for way better battery life than x86.

      Using ARM for VR means running them under constant load, leading to the XR2 Gen 2 only using performance and efficiency cores and dropping the two high and low and types. But that is bad for a PSVR3 acting as a wireless visor for PS6. It might be much better for Sony to use a rather low powered SoC optimized for decoding speed, which is currently limiting the latency on Quest 2 vs 3. Such an SoC could quickly receive a frame via (proprietary) wireless, decode it, and then basically go to sleep for 10ms at 60Hz. Or at 120Hz wake up after 5ms and create a second, reprojected frame using motion vectors provided by the PS5, similar to how VirtualDesktop already does it with its SSW reprojection running locally on Quest using Qualcomm libraries. And then sleep for another 5ms. That's possible because current Wifi is way faster than what is needed, faster speeds now mostly reduce latency, with the connection idling most of the time.

      With a sufficiently robust wireless protocol, it could even shut down the WiFi for that time, as it would exactly know when to wake up again for the next frame, and avoid the reconnection issues that hassle current WiFi PCVR. All this would allow Sony to either get away with a much smaller/lighter/cheaper battery than Quest 3 needs, or, maybe more important for Sony, get a PSVR3 to six or more hours of playtime without having to recharge it. Combined with the much faster PS6 GPU and better graphics, such a lighter/cheaper/longer lasting wireless visor would be a compelling offer compared to any standalone VR HMD.

      I seriously doubt though that your wish for platform-crossing cross-buy will ever happen, because this cuts into the heart of the business strategy of platform owners like Sony, Valve or Meta. It's not impossible, and certainly not a technical problem, but pretty much the opposite of what those companies have been going for so far.

      • flynnstigator

        Your idea is a good alternative. I still think there's value in a stand-alone, but a streamlined wireless connection could also work. The key, as you pointed out, is that there can't be any wireless troubleshooting involved for 99% of customers. It has to be a proprietary connection directly between the console and headset with no dependence on a router and no possibility for any of the common router and networking problems.

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          Technically you can already do something similar even using standard protocols when connecting a Quest to a Steam Deck under Linux for streaming via ALVR , with the Steam Deck serving as a direct wireless access point limited to one client and properly configured, circumventing the need for any router and most of the usual connection negotiations. And while trying the same under Windows will be sort of disappointing due to the limited Microsoft Wifi stack, the PlayStation OS is based on FreeBSD with even more advanced networking options than Linux.

          But the currently required configuration effort is pretty much the exact opposite of "there can't be any wireless troubleshooting involved for 99% of customers." Right now it's more "don't even think about it unless you are a masochistic Linux and networking expert that desperately wants to invest dozens of hours for no real world benefit."

    • Michael Speth

      We don't want Mobile Garbage infecting Sony Playstation VR. We don't want a battery that has the following negative effects

      * Increases weight
      * Increases heat
      * Increases risk – having a battery strapped to your head/face is a RISK!

      We also don't want garbage mobile graphics that will increase the price of the Playstation VR even more so than now. The major complaint about the PSVR2 was price. Now you are suggesting to make it even more expensive by adding a battery and a garbage mobile processor. Ridicilous.

      Further more, if you expect it to be meta level prices, Sony isn't going to love BILLIONS per month. Meta is willing to do it because their long term strategy is to filter EVERYTHING you see and hear through them.

      • flynnstigator

        Any wireless headset needs a battery, and I don't see how Sony can be competitive if they go tethered-only again for the PSVR 3. It's pretty clear that the price was set to sabotage PSVR by an exec who was trying to kill it. It wasn't driven by costs. Now, maybe it doesn't make sense for Sony to include a powerful SoC, but it's going to need some kind of SoC if they're going to stay relevant. They're also going to need to subsidize if they want to establish their platform. You're drawing a false dichotomy between no subsidies and Meta's billions.

        We can debate the merits of my stand-alone + connected idea. What you call "Mobile Garbage" is the only sector of VR that's consistently sold well, that's just a reality of the market, and I believe Sony would do well to tap into that. However, if a wireless connection was as easy as turning on the PS console and headset, that would help a lot, maybe enough that a stand-alone mode isn't necessary. But I just don't see how you can get away from having a battery in a future headset circa ~2027.

        • Michael Speth

          Meta loses billions per month. Claiming that Meta garbage sells well does't iclude the actual cost of the device let alone profit. Meta does't sell well and they are sellig less and less every year.

          Why? Because mobile garbage is inferior to Console/PC. Mobile garbage is a retardation of the VR industry.

          Sony didn't sabatoge their headset. They tried to make a profit like any normal company does. Meta not only doesn't make a profit, they lose billions per month.

          Where does meta get billions per month to lose on garbage hardware?

          • Bobby Norris

            Sony sabotaged their headset with the asking price, 2 years later and it's a sales flop.

      • Bobby Norris

        99% of PSVR2 games are Quest ports, so thanks for admitting 99% of PSVR2 games are garbage.

        When the platform has been a sales flop nobody is going to create exclusives.

      • shadow9d9

        Quest is exact same weight as psvr 2. Tired talking points.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      I don't think they should give up the console advantage and compete with Quest on its own territory. A wireless connection and extra batteries a la BoBoVR to the PS5 sound like a better way. I could live with a puck like AVP, containing battery and wireless connection to the console (or even PC?).

      • flynnstigator

        To be clear, I wasn't suggesting they give up the console connection. That would still be the main way of playing. In my idea, there would also be the possibility of running stand-alone for less demanding games. Beat Saber doesn't need the full power of the console, for instance. In fact, pretty much anything that would run on a PS4 Pro or PS5 base could run on an APU c2027-28 when this thing would come out if the fast pace of advancement for 15 watt SoC's continues. Sony could simultaneously eat Valve and Meta's lunches by being the only stand-alone HMD where you can massively level-up the graphics just by turning on your console and you don't have to deal with Windows, drivers, incompatibilities, etc. Will it happen? Probably not. It's just what I would be working on if I were in their shoes.

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          Technically Meta beat Sony with the simplified stand-alone plus high quality PCVR experience. Quest/Rift cross-buy relies on a similar ARM plus x86 combo. You can buy Bonelabs, Arizona Sunshine, MoH and about 100 other titles just once, play them on the Quest while on the go, then back home switch to a graphically much improved version by running it on a PC streaming to the same Quest.

          Admittedly you still have to deal with Windows for that. It wasn't exactly the killer feature that drove Quest's success. The majority of users only runs native Quest games, with casual titles the most popular, while those connecting it to a PC largely want to play Steam games not available on Quest.

          • flynnstigator

            Right, what I was saying was that you can have that experience without the headaches. Meta's PCVR implementation is so bad that I uninstalled the Rift software just so it wouldn't limit my performance or cause conflicts. They've essentially abandoned PCVR without technically killing Rift. The thing is, as frustrating as the implementation is, I can't criticize their overall strategy. PCVR relies on Microsoft, who has done an absolutely terrible job of making PCVR a seamless experience. Even if Meta was interested in PCVR, they'd have to pry it away from Valve, so it's not a good business. I'm a big believer in doing something well or not at all, so I'd rather they just kill Rift altogether than let it shamble along, but either way, they're only a serious contender in "mobile" VR, not high-end.

            Sony is in a unique position to leverage high-end and "mobile" VR for mutual benefit. If this hypothetical stand-alone PSVR 3 were to come out in a several years with an x86 APU at a spec level similar to today's PS5 (maybe a tall order, but bear with me here), and priced at-cost with the goal of making money on software, they should be able to offer a similar level of visual fidelity to today's PS5 + PSVR 2 with better lenses for $400 or less. So you've got full PS5 compatibility out-of-the-box for every flat or PSVR 2 game and graphics roughly equivalent to the latest Quest, and some people who don't have a Playstation will buy into Sony's ecosystem. Every game they buy automatically comes with the full-fidelity version, but they need to buy a PS5 Pro or PS6 to enjoy it. Then they could sell a docking station for $80-100 with HDMI out and a wireless connection to the PSVR 3. This could be used for low-latency streaming, asynchronous games where one player is flat and the other is in VR, and most importantly turns your HMD into a "PS5" for flat gaming. They could even release a slim console with the same APU but no VR for ~$250. People who already have a PS5 Pro or PS6 can enjoy full-fidelity on day one, others got their teaser hit, are accumulating titles on Sony's store, and are much more likely to stay in that ecosystem going forward.

            That's a coherent strategy where each segment increases sales of every other segment using only components that would have been needed anyway for no extra cost. Meta would not be able to compete at the high-end, and Valve would only be able to compete if they followed a similar strategy where current PCVR games on the Steam platform could run on-device or via Steam Link, and they would also need to cut themselves free of the Microsoft albatross. Do I think it will happen? Not really. Sony's leadership has never been what I would call "visionary," but it's what I believe is the correct strategy for the late 2020's / early 2030's.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            It's certainly possible, though it would probably take more than one console generation for mobile APUs to catch up to PS5. High end mobile performance trails desktop performance by about 10 years, but there are workarounds like the Steam Deck running many current games shows. And Sony and Microsoft will have to react to the success of Nintendo's switch, which just as the Steam Deck showed that people are willing to give up some performance and quality for added convenience. Sony already offered the PSP and PS Vita that still has a lot of fans, and recently rumors about a new mobile Sony console capable of running PS4 games popped up.

            Sony's latest handheld is the USD 200 PlayStation Portal, and it hints at another alternative. As an 8" 1080p streaming client for PS5 many reviewers didn't really see a point in such a device, and apparently not even Sony expected it to be a huge success, but gamers apparently loved it, causing it to be sold out for a long time. Microsoft is trying to get everyone onto Xbox Game Pass on multiple platforms, be it Xbox, PC, browser or even the announced, but never seen Xbox branded Quest 3. Most platforms will simply serve as streaming targets, only relying on Microsoft's cloud streaming servers instead of a local console like PS Portal.

            And while Meta gave up local PCVR, they are still working on their own streaming service, currently known as Avalanche. The most obvious sign that this is an important part of their strategy is that while being fine with movie streaming, 2D game streaming or local PCVR streaming, they still forbid any cloud streaming clients for PCVR to be published on the HorizonOS store. Which will most likely only change once their own service is ready or already launched.

            Such a streaming service could solve a number of Meta's problems:

            – It would allow for higher quality experiences than possible on Quest mobile SoCs.
            – It would provide a constant income source through monthly subscriptions like Game Pass or Nvidia's Geforce Now, compared to currently low and unsteady Quest app sales.
            – They wouldn't need to compete with Steam basically owning the PC gaming market for game sales, something Epic threw billions at with very limited success.
            – Like Sony they could release a stripped down HMD just for streaming that could be cheaper, lighter and longer lasting than a Quest while providing a better experience.

          • flynnstigator

            Good points! I had forgotten all about that PS Portal. But yes, the handheld angle is actually the biggest part of all this. Power the HMD using a handheld SoC that Sony would be ordering in the millions from AMD anyway and then market a docking station that would wirelessly or physically turn either the handheld or the HMD into a flat console with equivalent power to the PS5 non-pro and can natively run all of its games without developer intervention (or very minimal intervention).

            That way, Sony could establish themselves as a dominant store with class-leading VR hardware while piggybacking on investments made in already-profitable segments like handhelds. If VR gaming continues to be a small segment, they haven't thrown untold billions at it like Meta, and if it takes off, they're very well positioned to capitalize.

            Now realistically, the only company with the vision to actually do something like this is Valve*. It's not as easy or natural for them as it would be for Sony, and would likely be a strategy for c2032, maybe for Deckard's successor. But the basic strategy is the same: The headset comes with a 15 Watt x86 SoC that can run the existing library of Steam PCVR games at a similar fidelity to today's 4070 or 4080 (remember, this is at least 7 years from now) and that SoC is also shared with a Steam Deck. The HMD can also connect seamlessly to a high-end PC via Steam Link (or Virtual Desktop / ALVR, etc).
            *in before Virgin's obligatory downvote

            For the latter to work, Valve needs to distance themselves from Microsoft, either carving out a whole alternate universe within Steam or by finally making SteamOS a thing (I won't hold my breath on that one). They need to get rid of the baggage that comes with Windows, like horrible process scheduling that hamstrings high-end CPU's and constant driver updates. They also need to get rid of their own PCVR bloat, like SteamVR's performance penalty from making itself the middleman and always-on Home screen. The fact that Michael Bucchia and Guy Godin have outperformed Valve's entire SteamVR team of highly-paid professionals is just flat-out embarrassing. "Valve magic" only exists when they really put their minds to something, after all, and the company is more-than-capable of releasing garbage.

            As for streaming, I have been hearing for 30 years now how no one needs local processing and high-quality content will be streaming to a low-power box anytime now. I have no doubt that Meta would very much like to put everyone's "PCVR" in the cloud and get everyone to switch to a monthly subscription, but I'll believe it when I see it. Microsoft has been barking up that tree for years, and all they've managed to do is tarnish the XBOX brand and flush billions of dollars down the toilet. Yes, I know they have their share of subscribers, but not enough to sustain the investment, and sales of the Series X/S have been dismal compared to PS5 due partly to the streaming focus.

            The only company that's had any real success with high-fidelity streaming is NVIDIA. To put it bluntly, the difference between a company like NVIDIA and companies like Microsoft and Meta is simply management talent: NVIDIA has it and the latter don't. Pulling off a complicated strategy like streaming requires managerial talent, which is why I'll be truly shocked if the likes of MS or Meta ever succeeds at it. Even more shocked if they don't get greedy with the monthly subscription fee and price themselves right out of the market.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            TL;DR: "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed". – William Gibson

            Slightly insane rambling about nifty technology options following below this, not the longest unrequested thing I've posted here, but close:

            These are certainly interesting times. We have x86 APUs getting fast enough for PCVR with low enough power consumption for HMDs and handhelds, ARM SoC both on the high end matching x86 CPUs and mid range GPUs as well as cheap, low power ones driving for example tons of Android streaming boxes. Very fast wireless networks to connect everything, typical internet connection now exceeding 50Mbit and a growing cloud infrastructure capable of delivering low latency date everywhere. HMD hardware is getting commoditized, with Qualcomm/Goertek basically offering a boutique to configure custom HMDs with everything from SoC to lenses, displays and even the matching Android based OS.

            To speed things up, there is ETFR to reduce rendering loads, smart upscaling like DLSS/FSR already working well at high resolutions, reprojection and frame generation to lower GPU demand even further, possible cloud assist for rendering like shown by Microsoft and Varjo. For an idea of what AI image generation could do for graphics quality I recommend a quick side-by-side look at GTA San Andreas run through the Runway AI (youtu_be/FJ-uJdknNVc).

            And things are getting more interesting. Sony apparently still wants to get their a piece of the VR cake by now pricing PSVR2 more competitive. Apple has thrown its hat into the XR ring, triggering responses from Samsung, Google and partners, with Meta now licensing HorizonOS to others. Valve is as always working at Valve time speeds, but we regularly get signs of Deckard still being alive. Epic doesn't do VR yet, but positions Fortnite as a virtual world/metaverse now offering concerts and events, as do Roblox and others. Epic also triggered events that led to courts and regulators forcing Apple and Google to open up their app stores to increase competition. Microsoft acquired a whole empire of gaming franchises and would love to invite everyone everywhere for a small monthly fee.

            You probably wouldn't even have to hold your breath that long anymore for Valve to finally release SteamOS that allows for the most console like experience when playing Windows games by getting rid of Windows. Just last week they published new branding guidelines for 3rd party hardware that now include logos for "Powered by SteamOS" and "Steam Link Compatible (for VR headsets). A SteamOS release at least to other manufacturer using AMD APUs seem already on the way. Also hell finally froze over with Nvidia a few months ago finally switching to open source Linux drivers not only for the data center GPUs supported since 2022, but everything since RTX 2000.

            Your ideas for a Sony mashup of HMDs, handhelds and consoles using similar hardware to reduce cost and risk sort of matches what Valve is doing. There's the Steam Deck and successors using x86 APUs, a Deckard unicorn that one day might magically pop up out of nowhere, but apparently also something called Fremont, a SteamOS, AMD APU based set-top box. Their next attempt at a Steam console after the failed 2015 Steam Machine, not targeting the high end, more like a stationary Switch 2 or improved Steam Deck. We already saw renders of the matching Ibex controller with trackpads like Steam Deck or the original Steam Controller from the same data mining leak that gave us a look at Deckard controllers with joysticks and D-pad.

            Valve is using x86 APUs running the huge Steam library plus a bunch of Unix-like Linux based FOSS software like Proton to make everything work and highly customizable for the very different use cases of HMDs, mobile or desktop. Sony is using x86 APUs running their own games library on Unix-like FreeBSD that can run Linux binaries via Linuxulator, which could do many of the same things, with PS Portal being ARM/Android based. Sony also started releasing more of their PS5 titles for PC, Microsoft now releases everything everywhere. And even though cloud streaming has been "almost good" for a long time, Geforce Now works pretty flawlessly and Game Pass showed (now slowing) growth that VR could only dream of, reaching 34mn subscribers earlier this year. Usable PCVR cloud streaming should be just a matter of time.

            All that may result in nothing, but there are now tons of options to combine a lot of previously separate tech to achieve things previously impossible. For years Meta willing to spend billions of Facebook and Instagram ad money on VR seemed the only way VR had a chance of growing due to the small market and high investment required. Today a moderately financed start-up could bribe Guy Godin to help with a super-light streaming-only HMD connecting to a VR PC and running a very lightweight OS optimized esp. to run VirtualDesktop. And have it manufactured from readily available components using free software.

            Or give it a direct wireless link to a tiny AMD APU based machine running gaming optimized Bazzite Linux (or SteamOS 3 once available) without the need of a router or configuration after figuring out the previously mentioned configuration for masochistic Linux and networking experts. Running SteamVR titles, or flat screen Sony PC games or game pass or the mobile version of Horizon World via Android emulation for those with really disturbed minds.

            Someone no longer willing to wait for Deckard (and extremely competent and wealthy) might go crazy and hack the FOSS Monado OpenXR stack into a drop-in replacement for SteamVR to enable all the possible nifty optimizations described before on a cheap Linux box connected to a lightweight HMD with eye tracking to create a portable UEVR solution not automatically doubling as an electric heater. I doubt that we will be that lucky, and most of what would already be possible will never be realized. And many fundamental problems remain, content is still king and still one of the biggest issues.

            But I'm pretty sure that a lot of very interesting things will happen. Many of which coming from unexpected players that now get a chance because a lot of new options not requiring an insane upfront investment have come up. And I'm pretty excited that it has become harder to predict what will actually happen simply because so many things are now possible.

            Things are now in motion that cannot be undone – Gandalf

          • Michael Speth

            Sony doesn't want to make Garbage Tier Graphics games. A Mobile Processor for VR is the WRONG strategy for gaming.

            The reason Meta went with Mobile Processing is due to their strategy which is to filter EVERYTHING you see and hear through them. Their goal isn't making games, it is to control you in the future. That is why Meta is losing billions per month.

            If you look at the HTC Focus Vision – that is the headset you just described. It cost $1k USD and has a garbage mobile processor & Display Port Connection. They also used Fresnel lenses.

            Most of the Meta Fanbois are claiming the PSVR2 is overpriced at $550 USD. I would imagine the Meta Fonbois to go balistic if Sony came out with an HMD priced at $1k USD.

            Fortuantly, Sony won't be listening to your advise. They are in this thing to make games and so they will be tying their HMD to their console first and PC next as we have with PSVR2.

          • Sonyboy

            It appears Sony doesn't want to make any VR games

          • Michael Speth

            Sony just released My First Gran Turismo last week.

          • flynnstigator

            You see most aspects of the market clearly, but this animus toward mobile VR is preventing you from seeing the whole picture. High-end VR can’t survive without mobile VR, it’s too niche for major investment, as companies discovered during the Rift/Vive era of 2016-19.

            It’s a symbiotic relationship. If Meta shutdown its XR efforts tomorrow and everyone stopped making stand-alone headsets, most developers wouldn’t shift their investment into high-end VR because the money isn’t there. They would exit VR entirely and wait for it to become profitable. Mobile VR is the only reason we’re getting any high-end games aside from simulators, VR modes of flat games, and a few indie releases. Even a Steam-only indie game like Vertigo 2 wouldn’t sell well without all of the Quest owners.

            That doesn’t mean you have to like mobile VR games or want to buy them, but if you don’t see that it helps to sustain VR gaming, then you’re missing a big part of the picture.

          • Michael Speth

            You are saying Gran Turismo 7, My First Gran Turismo, Horizon Call Of The Mountain are only developed bc of Meta Garbage? That is utter nonsense. Sony would continue developing VR without Meta.

            The garbage tier devs would exit which means we would have fewer but higher quality games.

            Meta has only retarded VR. There is no valid relationship with Meta.

        • Arno van Wingerde

          Maybe, but the standalone version has to compete with Quest… so why not simply get a PSVR for console gaming and a Quest for stand-alone?
          Competition with Quest would only be possible at a significantly higher price&quality point, so maybe Sony shouldn't even bother with that….

          • flynnstigator

            Personally, I would never own more than one HMD. I’ll just buy the one that does what I want and then complain about its limitations on places like this. Right now, Quest is the only VR platform where I can run games on device when I feel like it and then also run wireless PCVR when I want the high-end experience. If Sony or anyone else were to change that, I would consider switching.

  • Rob

    I dont know what the point is of having oled lences when you cant play the best vr games. I played plenty of vr games on many platforms. The best vr games that I played were flight simulator 2020, asgards wrath 2, skyrim vr, assasins creed nexus, astrobot rescue mission and half life alyx. Originally the psvr2 didnt support any of these games. Now with pcvr support its somewhat better but you still miss half of them.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      Well, you just listed the best games that you played… but it seems you did not try Horizon:CotM, Residence Evil Village, Gran Turismo 7 and such… because you didn't have PSVR2. Also, a "game" like Kayak or No man's Sky supposedly looks stunning on PSVR2, quite possibly better than on Quest3 with a top-notch PC (4080/4090). I certainly enjoy my Quest3, but wondered whether to get a heavy PC and ordered a PS5pro+PSVR2 combo instead. It is possible they will be returned and I might go for PC+PCVR headset instead.. let's see.

      • shadow9d9

        A climbing sim, and some old ports.

        And no, not possibly better than with a 4090. That is not a thing. Also, horrible lenses to view through.

      • Leisure Suit Barry

        Yeah, those games look sooo stunning yet PSVR2 is selling worse than PSVR1

        Copium alert!

  • patfish

    Sony! it would have been so easy to make PSVR2 an success 2 years ago ;-)