PSVR 2 has landed its biggest sale yet, dropping the price by a solid 37%, less than two weeks ahead of its forthcoming PC VR adapter.

PSVR 2 launched in early 2023 with a $550 baseline pricetage. While the headset saw a sale that dropped it to $450 earlier this year, now there’s an even better deal.

PSVR 2 is now on sale at Amazon US (and several other Amazon regions) for $350, a full 37% discount from the MSRP.

The Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle, which includes the headset and the best games made for it so far, is also on sale for $400, a 33% discount.

The sale is described as a “Limited Time Deal,” so there’s really no telling how it will last.

The headset’s biggest sale yet comes less than two weeks before Sony launches a PC VR adapter which will let PSVR 2 play games directly from the huge library of SteamVR content—provided you’ve got a beefy gaming PC.

The adapter launches on August 7th, priced at $60 / €60 / £50 and will be available through select retailers and direct.playstation.com.

SEE ALSO
'Green Hell VR' Gets Long-awaited Co-op Mode This Month on Quest and PSVR 2

For years Sony resisted requests for a PC VR adapter for its original PSVR headset, and so it was quite the surprise when the company announced plans earlier this year for a PC VR adapter for PSVR 2. At the sale price of $350, PSVR 2 looks like an attractive PC VR headset considering its build quality, resolution, inside-out tracking, and quality controllers.

Granted, there’s a number of caveats which limit the headset when used with PC compared to its native home on PS5. Sony says when playing on PC, the adapter won’t serve up HDR, headset haptics, eye-tracking, adaptive triggers, or haptic feedback other than basic rumble. It will however display its native 2,000 × 2,040 per-eye resolution, 110-degree field of view, finger touch detection, and passthrough view.


Thanks to @alexplaysvg for the tip!

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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."
  • polysix

    Anyone not buying this at this price with an interest in PS5 or PC VR is a complete nutcase. Worth every penny even at full price. Had 8 HMDs and PSVR2 has been the best overall, HDR, Haptics, Controllers… IMMERSION through the roof vs anything else even with higher res or pancakes.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      But it still has that very annoying cable.

      • mirak

        Wanting to keep OLED and wireless, I am sticking to the Vive Pro Wireless.

      • deepsubs

        Unless I'm in an empty space playing a room-scale game and/or one requiring a lot of movement, wireless VR isn't really missed in my own experience. Plus the trade-offs (limited battery life, graphical limitations, display-stream compression with WiFi network glitches if trying overcome said limitations using PC streaming) are real and substantial.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          And for me a cable might only be acceptable for sitting simulation games like racing or flying, if any standing 180 or 360 degrees roomscale, I'll take the slightly graphical artifacts for granted or the batterylife (especially if you got multiple batteries). I really hate the cable, even with a kiwi pulleysystem it just is annoying as hell.

          • deepsubs

            Each to their own, as they say….I mostly prefer playing VR action adventure games sitting down anyway. Only the likes of Pistol Whip, Space Pirate Trainer etc. I play standing.

    • ViRGiN

      Anyone with interest in PCVR or PS5 VR is a complete nutcase.

      • Peter vasseur

        As apposed to a quest 3 standalone store with 99% of their games being lowered last gen stuff? It’s ok if you’re looking for low end tech demos than quest 3 may be for you. Clearly Virginia has no clue what he’s talking about and suffers from mental issues.

        Last week he was saying how 300% of quest users were hooked to a pc. Yet today your a nut job if you use pcvr. Well as soon as you hook your q3 to a pc you’re a pcvr user. Virginia clearly doesn’t understand that concept.

        Both pcvr and psvr2 smoke anything you can get native standalone of q3. Go ahead fanboys play that last gen had like it’s the best ever.

        • ViRGiN

          I said 300 years ago, not yesterday.

          Don't feed the trolls!

          Buy games only from Viveport!

          • Peter vasseur

            Ok enjoy your low end non hooked to a pc quest 3. If you like low budget be more power to you. The q3 is all you need.

          • ViRGiN

            If you like infinite power machines running 1990s grade PCVR games, power to you.

          • Peter vasseur

            The only system that runs 1990 vr games is native quest. You are so delirious, without a pc any quest is junk.

          • ViRGiN

            You are the true OG Virgin.

          • shadow9d9

            PCVR gaming has been a dead zone for years, with no funding. Enjoy your forever early access jankware while Quest users play Assassin's Creed, Batman, Asgard's Wrath 2, and other highly funded exclusives.

          • Peter vasseur

            Re8, re4, gt7, com, synapse. Aces of thunder psvr2 and Pc only. Yes you can hook your quest up to a pc and play it. But not a standalone. Also don’t act like quest has all the hot games. I have a quest 2 and I’ve been on the store. A large part of them are last gen games I had on psvr1. If you want low level graphics. That’s fine you’re right where you should be.

          • ViRGiN

            But does PCVR has blast processing and 128-bit support?

          • Peter vasseur

            No but im sure the quest line does, the tech seems from around that era.

          • NL_VR

            Let the fanboy war begin

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            while Quest users play Assassin's Creed, Batman, Asgard's Wrath 2, and other highly funded exclusives games that exist only because Meta paid for (large parts) of the development, taking a loss to promote the platform.

            FTFY

          • Peter vasseur

            It's called Gt7, RE4, RE8, Synapse, Com, Aces of Thunder, see I can do it too.

        • shadow9d9

          Gamers care about gameplay than graphics. Only a mainstream, low quality player would prefer graphics to gameplay and wireless freedom.

          • Peter vasseur

            Yeah sure they do until the graphics suck. I have heard thousands of times people complaining about the graphics in vr sucking, which is why they don't like it. Wireless freedom in a room with a bunch of furniture, which is the reality of most users, doesn't body extremely well for massive room scale wireless.

            I have a quest 2, so I know what it is and I tell you its not that big of a deal. Anyone in their right mind would take it, if there wasn't such massive tradeoff on the battery side and graphical power side. I don't want the lowest end version of the game, which is generally what you get on standalone. More power to ya if thats what is good for you.

    • Rob

      Says the delusional fanboy. The reality is that 98% of the people with interest in PS5 are not interested in VR. And most people that are interested in VR and have an expensive gaming PC probably have already a different VR headset and are not wasting money on another one. Finally many favour standalone VR over cable VR. So no. Maybe some fanboys will buy it but thats it

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        Those numbers are too pessimistic. The 98% "not interested" are Steam users not connecting a VR HMD, which doesn't represent interest. After a few months many only rarely use their HMDs, so more than 2% of all global Steam users own a HMD/are interested in VR. The ratio to global users is heavily skewed anyway with Quest now making up ~50% of all HMDs used for PCVR, but only selling in 23 mostly Western countries. So the most popular VR HMD isn't even available in 170 countries, including India and China representing 1/3rd of the world's population, each with a large Steam user base.

        US teens as the largest Quest user group due to Quest 2 being a popular tech present aren't representative either, but in the 2022 Piper Sands "Taking stock with teens" 26% of the surveyed teens said they already have (access to) a VR HMD, and 9% wanted to get one, for a total of 35%. 32% weren't interested in VR at all, with the rest interested, slightly interested or unsure, but not planing to get a HMD.

        Current low VR usage rates need to be looked at in context. It's very likely that way more than 2% of the PS5 owners would be interested in PSVR2 under the right circumstances. Sony saw ~5% of the PS4 owners getting a PSVR1, despite the console being very underpowered for VR, and PSVR1 somewhat clobbered together using PS3 move controllers and hacks. While we are far from mainstream, with VR getting more usable/accessible and lowering entry prices we should see (slowly) growing interest.

      • Peter vasseur

        Yet it's sold out at a bunch of places and has seen plus 2000% sales since the sale. Must just of been a few fanboys buying them. At $350 the psvr2 is the best deal in VR hands down. Since youre so high and mighty, what VR hmd are you rocking?

    • Nevets

      Did you not read the part of the article that says eye tracking, HDR and most haptics will not be available via PC?

      • Peter vasseur

        What games have those features on pcvr?

        • Peter vasseur

          I like the downvotes, both people are a fraud because they can't answer the question. Which shows this argument is garbage and a loser on the intelligent battlefield.

    • mirak

      Having a Vive Pro Wireless with 1600×1440 panels, the 2000×2000 OLED panels are what I want, but I am not going back to wired, so I have to pass.

    • Nepenthe

      Haven't tried one, but I read lots of complaints about tiny sweet spot and weird blur. Sounded sub-standard.

    • Leisure Suit Barry

      I'm still not buying it because of the tiny sweet spot and everything blurred outside of it. Nothing worse than having to adjust it every 5 minutes and worry about it moving ever so slightly

      Hopefully the release a V2 with bigger sweet spot lenses

      • deepsubs

        I had those problems as well, but they were resolved by the excellent Globular Cluster headset mod, which I highly recommend.

        A V2 could swap out fresnal lenses for pancake ones, but would require LCD instead of OLED to achieve adequate brightness. There are always tradeoffs….

      • Peter vasseur

        That is a comment coming from someone who has never used one. I don't have that issue moving it every 5 mins due to sweet spot issues. the eye tracking more than makes up for it, so really this argument is actually moot. Eye tracking is a movable sweet spot vs just an lense with no eye tracking. You really don't realize how much eye tracking makes a difference until you go back to a hmd without it.

    • shadow9d9

      Old bargain bin parts like horrible fresnel lenses, a wire, ringed controllers, and no speakers.

  • ViRGiN

    After so many false starts, like with UEVR injector, THIS is the moment PCVR starts, right? Right?!

    • Sofian

      like with UEVR injector

      What do you mean?

      • ViRGiN

        If you know, you know.

    • Peter vasseur

      Seriously it’s always the people lacking the most understanding that have the loudest voices pushing outright lies. Pcvr is the standard for your precious q3, without being able hook to a pc quest would be dead.

      • ViRGiN

        If it wasn't for this website, nobody except your family would know you're stupid.

        • Peter vasseur

          Being happy with a low end be his doesn’t make you known what you’re talking about. Meta only has sales numbers because they subsidize to the tune of billions per quarter. Take that away and push more realistic prices and just like that, sales drop massively. That q3 isn’t selling anywhere near the same as the super subsidized q2. That’s why you’re getting a lite q3. It’s ok, you can can be the meta fanboy.

          • ViRGiN

            Take Quest subsidy away, and consumer VR existed.
            You are a gayben.

          • shadow9d9

            Research and development isn't the same as subsidizing hardware. You are a complete know nothing.

          • Peter vasseur

            Yes you can take off research and development, upload just had an article today. Talking about quest showing increased profit this quarter over 2023. total profit was like $325M total losses for the quarter was like 5 billion. The article does mention research and development is about 50% of that loss. That still leave a 2.15 billion loss. They been doing this for the last 4 years.

            They now want a 20% reduction in spending starting next year and they are going to make a junkier quest three which removes the best thing about it the lenses. Their new q3 isn't selling as well as the q2 did because they just can sellout at the prices they sold the other one. They are taking hits on every hmd, as a cost for marketshare. its just not sustainable for most companies.

            The market has been distorted by their subsidized hmds. Hence everyone wants the Cadillac for Pinto prices. Also you are delirious if you think standalone anything is the pinnacle of VR. Clearly you haven't tried anything other than a quest or that wouldn't ever come out of your mouth.

      • shadow9d9

        PCVR is used by the tiniest audience of all vr, for good reason. The supermajority of quest users use it exclusively for standalone. Devs sell literally 10x the amount they sell on pcvr, on quest standalone.

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          The rating ratio for VR titles available on Quest and Steam is usually around 4:1, not 10:1, which probably matches sales. This makes sense with around 2mn monthly active VR users on Steam, about 10mn active Quest users, and about 10% of the 10mn Quest used for PCVR streaming.

          There were a few examples where Quest apps outsold PCVR by 10:1 like Ultrawings 2, but those were usually particularly unsuccessful on Steam. The Ultrawings developers complained about this, but on Steam their cartoony flight simulator was competing with MFSF, X-Plane, VTOL and many more serious simulators, with a simulator community responsible for a lot of USD 1000+ HMD sales and not looking for another simple, mostly arcady flight sim. On Quest Ultrawings 2 finally brought somewhat realistic physics, so it was the sole choice for those looking for a standalone flight sim, making it more successful.

          People regularly bring up the 10:1 to show how Quest has won and PCVR is dead, but that's not actually true, and the real numbers prove it. PCVR is no doubt a lot smaller (and more expensive), but there is still a significant number of users that want more than what current mobile SoCs can provide and are both willing and able to pay for it. Which is why devs continue to release for PCVR.

        • Peter vasseur

          I guess if you're happy playing the lowest end version then thats great for you(casuals). While some games design, power really doesn't affect the gameplay or graphics. I sure see a lot of people who have them hooked up to computers.

    • Peter vasseur

      When does quest 3 start? They don’t get Al the games. Aces of Thunder is pcvr/psvr2 because your quest can’t run it without a pc.

      • ViRGiN

        Zero Caliber 2 is Quest only because after wasting ~$1000 on a PC/PS5, deeze nuts have no money for $25 game.

  • Hussain X

    You heard it here first. I'll reveal Sony's potential PS VR2 strategy, since I've not heard anyone else mention this. They're going to get as many PSVR2 headsets out in the wild as possible, even if it means heavily discounted sales & basic PCVR support to get them out there. Then when it's ready, Sony will announce GTA VI with exclusive official VR support for Sony PlayStation. Then all those PS VR2 owners will just be a PS5 console away, if they don't have one already, to be able to step inside the world of GTA VI. GTA VI could be around for at least the next 10 years, so I see no way Rockstar Games will take the risk not to add VR support. VR could be massive 10 years from now, and the VR kids of today would be VR adults by then with money to spend.

    • ViRGiN

      That's just wishful thinking. The game is too big to launch with VR support. Even if every headset owner bought 3 copies, the numbers will still be dwarf compared to flat sales. There is nothing for Rockstar to gain with vr port, other than our eternal gratefulness.

      • kool

        It's gonna happen but let's not pretend GTA wouldn't move a shit ton of headsets!

    • Nevets

      Dream on!

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        Doubts are justified, but this is exactly what PSVR2 was designed for: running PS5 AAA also in VR without requiring expensive changes. Achieved by keeping the resolution low, effective ETFR VR-only performance boost, and even Fresnels' low edge image clarity hiding artifacts from Sony's aggressive fallback FFR.

        If Rockstar wants VR support for GTA VI, PSVR2 would be first choice. They added full game 1st person view to GTA V on PS4/Xbox One/PC, making VR via mods feasible. They were interested in expanding to VR, agreeing to a GTA San Andreas Quest port. Quest finally has ~10mn active users, indicating VR isn't going the way of the Dodo/3D TV. And many big companies now enter XR (again), incl. Apple/Google already making Rockstar money with GTA Vice City/San Andreas for iOS/Android.

        VR support in GTA VI would still be a risk, not a requirement. If they integrated VR, disappointing PSVR2 sales still could prevent a release. VR support would probably be at least a time limited PSVR2 exclusive. GTA V released 2013-09 for PS3/Xbox 360, 2014-11 for PS4/Xbox One and with a 19 months delay for PC in 2015-04. With GTA 6 hitting consoles first again, one year PSVR2 exclusivity would look nice for Sony and cost nothing. So depending on how well Sony sold their hybrid strategy, this dream might become (virtual) reality.

    • Daniel Meyer

      You know, there are a lot of well versed people on the internet knowing how the games industry works. You are not one of them. Keep your delusions to yourself next time, it is a waste of everyones time to read that.

    • Peter vasseur

      While that would be great, not sure there is a powerful enough system, even pc to run that in be looking like it does.

      I do think that’s the strategy for astronomy. Get a bunch a flatters to get stronger announce the be mode/patch. Which makes them want to get the psvr2

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    TL;DR: Jim Ryan is gone, so now Sony can admit that the PSVR2 was always cheap to produce and put it on a not self-sabotaging track to hopefully long term success, with their unavoidably slow hybrid strategy adding more traction soon.

    The interesting part is that they can afford this. Announced as a temporary deal, this isn't a fire sale to get rid of the remaining PSVR2 before dropping it. They may want to reduce excess stock or drum up interest for the coming PC support, but neither of those two would be a reason to sell the hardware at loss, which often happens in an actual fire sale.

    Meaning Sony can produce, sell, ship and service a PSVR2 for USD 350 incl. the cut platforms like Amazon take. Not all that surprising, as right from the start the PSVR2 hardware with ~2K OLED, Fresnel, no integrated audio, relying on standard USB-C connections with a rather small onboard SoC hinted at a design allowing the HMD to produced rather cheap, much cheaper than e.g. the Quest 2 that Meta sold for USD 200 in the final months. The extra eye tracking and advanced haptics based on LRAs don't require expensive components either, the patents covering them may be the bigger factor.

    PSVR2 was launched well after the component shortages during CoViD-19 that drove up prices, so it's unlikely that they now recalculated and all of the sudden figured out that selling it cheaper was an option. It seems more likely that the rumors are true and previous SIE CEO Jim Ryan wanted the not profitable PSVR dead, but was forced by Sony Japan to still release the PSVR2 to keep the company in the consumer XR game. So he effectively sabotaged it, by both denying it the support it needed and selling it with a huge margin more akin to accessories like controllers, driving the price above the PS5 itself.

    Ryan left Sony in late March 2024. Changing strategy one day later would look rude, so they waited for a grace period of 3.5 months and now start adjusting the path from "leads to certain death" to "may actually work, even if it's rather late". I seriously doubt they could even drop PSVR2, as their told most developers about their hybrid VR strategy only three years ago in August 2021, and with typical AAA development times now being longer than that, many games that went for such a design wouldn't even be out by now.

    Not sure if Sony would be liable for losses if they discontinued PSVR2 now, but not completely losing developer trust may be enough reason to try and salvage PSVR2, now that the person at the head of Sony's PlayStation business isn't a well known VR hater anymore. Hybrid was always going to be a long game anyway due to multi-year development cycles for the AAA titles it targets, a strategy that might take even more than one console generation to really gain traction, so messing up the first 18 months might prove less fatal for PSVR2 than lacking software support turned out to be for Quest Pro.

    So hopefully this summer sale is just about testing the water plus some promotion for the PCVR support, and we'll see more attractive bundles and game announcements for the coming holiday season. And maybe even an ad campaign big enough to be noticeable by the public, to make sure that the people that will be bombarded with Quest 3s commercials realize the PSVR2 actually exists.

    • Leisure Suit Barry

      All we need now is a PSVR2 V2 with bigger sweep spot lenses.

      Heck even Quest 2 lenses would do

      • deepsubs

        Hell no….the Quest 2 lenses have God-awful God rays! The Fresnal lenses in PSVR2 are so much better in that regard, tiny sweet spot be damned….

        • Leisure Suit Barry

          Yeah PSVR2 lenses are good if you are playing a seated game and don't have to move around.

          But if you are playing standing and moving around then be prepared to keep adjusting the headset every 5 minutes, while not an issue with Quest 1 and 2

      • Peter vasseur

        I have quest 2 and it's junk compared to my psvr let alone my psvr2.

        • Leisure Suit Barry

          Lenses are much better

          • deepsubs

            Having used both headsets extensively, I can tell you that the Q2 lenses are objectively far worse due to the God rays. The tiny sweet spot on the PSVR2 lenses is annoying, but the Globular Cluster headset mod has solved that issue for me at least :).

            The Q3 pancake lenses by the sounds of things (I have not tried one yet) are a substantial improvement over the Fresnal lenses in both headsets. However, the significant decrease in image brightness (requiring LCD panels in place of OLED to overcome) might not be worth it for some, although personally I wouldn't mind this.

          • Leisure Suit Barry

            Well it's all personal opinion, but myself and most other people prefer Quest 1 and Quest 2 lenses.

            PSVR2 lenses with chromatic aberration, tiny sweet spot, poor edge to edge clarity etc

            Hopefully they release a PSVR2 V2 with improved lenses

    • deepsubs

      Interesting points. Few thoughts:
      – Last I checked, Jim Ryan was Head of SIE until earlier this year. If he hated VR that much, surely he could have just torpedoed it in early 2021 when the decision was made to proceed to full development and release, and save some money in the process. I appreciate at the end of the day SIE reports back to Sony Corp in Japan….do you really think he had so little leverage that he was 'forced' to take on PSVR2 under duress (in effect making his CES2022/23 presentations on PSVR2 'hostage' videos!)? It does otherwise explain a lot of subsequent choices in retrospect (i.e. how much the PSVR2 appeared very much driven from the Japanese side of the business in teardowns etc., pricing, the minimal promotion through blog posts and the odd YouTube promo video, the absence of any effort to make PSVR1 games compatible or port more over, the lack of first-party games or sustained efforts to get some more third-party PCVR-exclusive games onto the headset e.g. Lone Echo 1/2, HL:A….).
      – Now that SIE has two CEOs (one for hardware, the other for software), how do you think it will affect things for PSVR2 going forward….for example, getting more games and rectifying some of the decisions mentioned in my previous point? For example, I suspect adding PC support is one result of this change in leadership (I very much doubt Ryan would have countenanced it under his watch). My ongoing worry is that, with no 'overall' head able to devise a coherent strategy for shifting both PSVR2 software and hardware, it will still end up as a half-hearted afterthought.
      – I fear Sony make take away a slightly different lesson than the one you pose….namely, that a cost-reduced headset superseding the current model and enabling a permanent price reduction whilst preserving profit margins is the way to go. This is exactly what happened with the PS Vita, and I can see the same happening to PSVR2 (so bye-bye, OLED display?).
      – I doubt PSVR2 is going to be discontinued anytime soon….the amount of consumer and developer backlash and lost goodwill through such a dick move would more than outweigh any monetary advantages from doing so. Again the PS Vita provides an illustrative example…it was in production for seven years, andcontinued to attract third-party digital releases even after it was discontinued. It may not have sold gangbusters, but Sony evidently felt it was doing well enough to continue supporting as a 'niche' sideline. Unless this sudden surge in sales causes a complete rethink, I strongly suspect PSVR2 may well be headed that way as well (which is still infinitely preferable to the thermonuclear alternative of dropping it completely).

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        TL;DR: I expect the prices to fall, but no extra VR software development from Sony, as the PSVR2 strategy is to make AAA VR feasible by attaching VR to regular PS5 games, not again creating large VR titles that so far have financially failed on every VR platform. Sony's not creating dedicated 1st party VR titles wasn't part of the sabotage, but what they were always aiming for, so even a very supportive management will stick to that.

        What happened and what will happen is hard to tell, as all we get are a couple of rumors to figure out what will be rather complex internal processes. I think that the PSVR2 hardware plus hybrid game concept is actually extremely well designed, so there have to be people inside of Sony that really want it to succeed. We know that Ryan inherited PSVR1 from his predecessor, never got warm with VR and after the launch of PS5 made some blabla comments about how they were looking at what they learned from PSVR1 for the future. Which sounded mostly like a PSVR2 being years away, if it would ever be released.

        Interestingly the Sony Japan division that apparently intervened was their movie entertainment business. They didn't really care about PSVR2 as a gaming HMD, but wanted to have a HMD in case watching movies with them would ever catch on. So Sony now pushing PSVR2 again might even be connected to Apple making movies and video one of the main applications for AVP, getting general praise for this. We just don't know, but with the movie division being the driving force, OLED displays should be safe. Sony's phone division is one of the main users of 4K OLED panels, designed by Sony and manufactured by Samsung/LG, meaning OLED will even be less costly for them than for others.

        I suspect that the stupid pricing and lack of promotion during the last holiday season is at least partly Ryan's fault, while the lack of first party VR games is actually part of the PSVR2 concept and will therefore not change. The whole hardware design of PSVR2 aims at enabling current gen PS5 AAA titles to also run on in VR on the fixed hardware console, by compensating the usually much higher requirements in VR with resolution restrictions, ETFR, reprojection, checkerboard upscaling and more.

        This was very likely a reaction to VR turning out to only attract a small part of the total user base, not enough to pay for designed for VR AAA titles. So the only way to get AAA VR titles was to get some flat AAA titles targeting the whole PS5 player base to also integrate VR support, with RE8 and GT7 as very convincing demonstrations for what Sony is going for. But this also means that basically all the future effort will go into making VR integration easier and cheaper for 3rd party developers instead of releasing any dedicated VR only titles. HCotM is basically an expensive tech demo, with no intention to ever scale it to something like the other Horizon games.

        I'd expect the now split software/hardware management to pretty much stay on course with the hybrid strategy, mostly supporting other companies to add VR to flat games and doing the same for some of their own franchises. But even then only for those titles that kind of already fit VR, so I don't expect VR support for God of War.

        Conceptually this makes PSVR2 an accessory that allows to experience some PS5 games in a more immersive way, not a separate platform like Quest that comes with games designed specifically for it. That may be disappointing for VR enthusiasts hoping that Sony would throw its weight/money behind pushing the medium, esp. with 1st party AAA development. But with the current low VR user numbers this is actually the best/most realistic way to get a larger number of AAA titles playable in VR, without depending on someone like Meta always paying the bill or Valve releasing a "this is how you do VR right" title like HL:A once a decade.

        I really have no idea how this will end, how much trust was already lost or how many hybrid games are still in development or were already cancelled. Game developers also wondered about SIE management's (missing) support for PSVR2, so just the lack of commitment for years alone might have ruined the clever hybrid strategy. The great part about hybrid is that it removes a lot of pressure for PSVR2 to sell in huge numbers. PS Vita as a separate platform needed to have its own, large enough user base. But PSVR2 as an accessory for regular AAA can get away with only a fraction of the PS5 users, as those AAA will be released anyway. If developers can add VR to their projects for 5-10% additional cost, than PSVR2 only has to increase sales by those 5-10% to keep the AAA games with VR support coming.

        And that will attract a lot of existing VR users that have been hoping for VR AAA for years, as well as a lot of PS5 owners, at least if Sony now moves the price to sane levels. Apparently they sold as may PSVR2 on the first day of the USD 350 sale as during the whole of 2024 before at USD 550. So there definitely is interest in PSVR2, all it required to sell a lot was to get rid of the idiots that priced it as a luxury item.

        • deepsubs

          'Interestingly the Sony Japan division that apparently intervened was their movie entertainment business. They didn't really care about PSVR2 as a gaming HMD, but wanted to have a HMD in case watching movies with them would ever catch on.'

          Do you have a source for that comment? That is both simultaneously fascinating and downright bewildering….if 3D televisions and movies at home never took off (as Sony of all people should know, given they were one of the major proponents!), why on Earth do they think VR movies (which has all of the same frictions and then some….) will ever catch on??? Even more bizarre when you factor in that PSVR2 currently doesn't support 3D or immersive movie viewing in any shape or form (not even 3D Blu-ray, which PSVR1 does support)!

          I enjoy 3D/immersive movies and don't mind wearing a headset…but I suspect I am very much in a minority. Apple's support of this in their Vision Pro headset I see as more of a 'bonus' feature, not a core use case (and certainly not for $3500!).

          Your reasons for the lack of first-party games and hybrid games strategy are sound…I just strongly feel that if they were serious about shifting units, creating 'buzz' around the platform, and making a real 'go' of things, they would throw some more time and effort in porting over some of the better PSVR1 titles and pay for ports of third-party VR software that are currently marooned on PC. A port of HL:A (which I appreciate is not technically straightforward as the Source 2 engine would need to be ported over first) would certainly do that, and if Valve was a 'normal' company I strongly suspect it would have happened by now already due to the amount of money it could make (this is Half-Life, for crying out loud!).

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            TL;DR: the source was lost, but not reliably anyway; Sony Pictures just cared about regular 4K movies; PS5/PSVR2 specific performance tweaks may make porting some existing PCVR games more difficult, but basically I don't know who might want/refuse to support PSVR2 for any number of reasons.

            I searched my browser history for the source for Sony Pictures intervening to keep the PSVR2 alive, but couldn't find it. I vaguely remember that it wasn't any type of semi-official source, but someone mentioning it on a site like reddit or neogaf without naming a source themselves.

            I'm pretty sure that this popped up shortly after the USD 550 price was announced, as part of a discussion why SIE might charge so much for PSVR2. This puts it some time before the presentation of AVP, and the interest of Sony Pictures wasn't about 3D or immersive video, instead they just wanted to keep their options open as a major film studio and publisher. My reference to AVP wasn't about why they insisted that PSVR2 would be released, but why they may now start pushing it again. AVP sort of legitimized virtual cinema that had existed for years, but reached a new quality level on AVP primarily thanks to very high bandwidth 4K streaming through Apple TV+, while 3D/Immersive video is still rare and more of a perspective for the future.

            I don't know why the PS5 versions of F1 or Grids and others haven't gotten PSVR2 support, and there may be many reasons. Hybrid games may require integrating VR into the design early on for technical/performance reasons, which could make adding it to games already/almost released even on the same platform infeasible. Codemasters/EA may have looked at the PSVR2 price and decided that it would cause it to flop, not justifying any extra effort. The more brute force approach of requiring more GPU power for VR on PCs may make it difficult to port existing PCVR games to PSVR2, which probably relies on a balance of low resolution, ETFR and the PS5's insanely fast memory system with inline texture decompression in the AMD APU and 16GB of very fast GDDR6 RAM shared between CPU and GPU.

            F1 23 minimum/recommended PC specs are 8GB/16GB CPU RAM, 4GB/6GB GPUs for flat and 6GB/8GB GPUs for VR. This adds up to 12GB/22GB total for flat and 14GB/24GB for VR. A PS5 might get away with 16GB total for "recommended" quality even in VR, if the game design relies on very fast graphics streaming instead of holding everything in RAM. And while it should be easy to switch from streaming to "lots of memory" by simply not swapping out unused parts, switching the other way should be a lot harder. Similar to Quest/PCVR releases, it may be necessary to design for PSVR2 first and then port to PCVR with higher system requirements to get multi-platform support to work.

            PSVR2 actually relies on a lot of tricks to run VR games on the same hardware as flat games, and the PS5 can pipe 8-9GB/sec uncompressed from SSD to graphics RAM, and up to 21GB/sec for highly compressible content, all without taxing either the CPU or GPU. That's impossible on PCs. In reaction Microsoft ported the Xbox DirectStorage API to Windows 11 (later 10) and released GDeflate for texture decompression on the GPU, to at least get compressed graphics data directly from SSD to GPU without having to pipe everything through the CPU. But it will take years for this to become widely available and integrated into game designs to lower RAM requirements, so all current PCVR games/modes still require adding (a lot) more hardware compared to the flat version, esp. visible in UEVR games that usually need a beast of a machine due to lacking any VR specific optimizations.

            The above is of course pure speculation and mostly a very long way to say "I don't know". Just like I have no clue why exactly Sony didn't at least provide ports of PS4/PSVR1 games. The options range from "deliberate sabotage" over "lacking input parity with the PS5 dual sense not supporting 6DoF tracking and the PS Sense controllers lacking a trackpad alternative" to "they'll now add a software input compatibility layer to the already existing full PSVR1 compatibility (with PSVR1 hardware) and also start porting some games for reasons". I'll wait and see.

  • I loved my time with PSVR 2 but the pricing at launch really hindered it.

    This should have been around the range we were at since you needed a PS5 as well.

    Hopefully it gets life on PC as the OLED is very nice for certain types of content but I really want to see the HDR and eye tracking unlocked at some point. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully it brings in some new PCVR players to XR.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      The current lack of HDR probably has technical reasons. The 2000*2040*2@120Hz PSVR2 resolution at 24bit RGB fully saturates the bandwidth of DisplayPort 1.3. For HDR you need 10/12bit per color, so 30/36bit RGB. PSVR2 uses the USB-C DisplayPort Alt mode to send DP signals over some of the high speed USB-C data lines, and DP1.4 that doesn't increase raw data speed, but introduces (barely noticeable) DSC stream compression to allow HDR or higher resolutions.

      Most PC GPUs from the last decade support DP 1.4, so Sony enabling HDR later is an option. They may have left it out of the initial release to avoid any compatibility issues, as for example many laptops only offer HDMI, which can be converted to DP, but only AMD fully supports DSC over HDMI too, while Nvidia drivers only added this for RTX 3000/4000, where it doesn't work reliably yet.

      Eye tracking depends on software running on PS5/PC that Sony licensed from Tobii, requiring a fee. Tobii offers similar software for PCVR HMDs like Vive Pro Eye or Pimax Crystal with a tiered license from "just for gaming" to "whatever enterprise". Sony not offering PSVR2 eye tracking to PC users is very likely due to either their license agreement with Tobii and/or cost. This could be mitigated by Tobii offering a separate license to PC PSVR2 users, but unlike HDR this feature will probably never be added as a free update by Sony.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        That's a very plausible, and I also think THE, reason why eyetracking isn't supported yet on PCVR. But then again, they could have upped the price a bit of the dongle to cover it, as the dongle is required to even get it working. But who knows how much the licensing is, as we saw with every headset that had Tobii eyetracking around $200 higher as the one without, and the hardware needed itself is probably far less as $50.

      • deepsubs

        The main benefit of eye-tracking (if one ignores using it as an input method) is foveated rendering, which is critical for squeezing every last drop of performance from the PS5, but perhaps is less necessary for PCVR, as the intended target market probably have PCs with beefy-enough specs to negate this.

        HDR though is definitely something they should look into adding support for later on, as that will be a real point of differentiation compared to other current PCVR headsets on the market, AFAIK.

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          Even if the target market doesn't have a beefy-enough GPU to run a title, there is at least the option to get a beefier one. PCVR users are pretty much used needing rather expensive graphics hardware, which usually also gives them a number of nice benefits beyond VR, so ETFR wasn't as much as a requirement. And apparently ETFR is actually less efficient in PCVR titles. On Quest Pro ETFR only saved ~25% render time due to the slow CPU, on Pimax Crystal users see 35%-50% savings, but on PSVR2 Sony claimed up to 75% savings, probably due to the whole PSVR2 being balanced esp. for this.

          Given that the only hardware upgrade option for PSVR2 users to get better VR performance would be the not yet release PS5 Pro, an efficient ETFR implementation was basically an existential need for PSVR2 to run hybrid games in both 4K and VR on PS5, while it is a nice-to-have goodie on both PCVR due to available GPUs and Quest due to every game being designed to run in VR in the first place.

  • mirak

    That's good for VR, but without wireless, I have to stick to Vive Pro with wireless, which is fine for me.

  • Leisure Suit Barry

    Now imagine it launched at this price.

    They probably would of sold their initial 2M within 6-9 months so they wouldn't of had to shut production down, and in turn this would of got more developers on board which again in turn would drive more sales, rinse repeat.

    We would probably be at 3-4M sales by now. I'm guessing some people at Playstation had their heads so far up their own backside that they thought people would be rushing to get it at $550 just because of how PS5 sold during lockdown.

    • shadow9d9

      "Would have." And they also would have lost a ton of money.

      • Leisure Suit Barry

        Why?

        Estimates put the manufacture cost at around $350, so sell it at manufacture cost and make money from the software like they do with PS5, which is actually initially sold at a loss.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          At the time of release it certainly wasn't that, it was higher, but I'll bet the costs have come down by now.

          • Leisure Suit Barry

            It certainly wasn't $550, nowhere near that

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Who says it wasn't nowhere near that? I wouldn't be surprised if the whole set (including controllers and all licenses for used tech) would be towards $500 or even higher, at the time of first production. The displays alone are probably already pretty expensive due to low yield when they first started.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            No, the OLED displays are just variants of what Sony already used in their 4K Xperia phones, and OLED panels are typically around 30% more expensive than similar LCDs.

            Sony's microOLED used in AVP had low yields, driving up cost, and Apple's dual-layer OLED panels used in the latest iPad Pro are expected to at least double the price compared to a single layer OLED, also due to difficulties in manufacturing them. In both these cases the technology is very new, but 120Hz 4K HDR OLEDs were used for several generations in Sony smartphones with slightly lower PPI before PSVR2 released, so the process was well established. Their price should have dropped very little since early 2023.

            Pretty much everything about the PSVR2 design hinted at low production cost as a core design goal. Many mistook it for high end due to the retail price and the inclusion of eye tracking that previously was an expensive add-on for USD 200+, but this was simply a necessity as a significant performance boost was required for VR to enable hybrid games to work, and certainly not a main factor driving the price.

            Patents fees for a mass consumer HMD to both Tobii for eye tracking and Immersion for the haptics are very unlikely to be more than USD 50 combined, with Tobii getting the bigger share for their tracking software. Tobii announced that the Sony deal would significantly increase their revenue in the coming years, but considering that they operated at a loss for several years before that, this doesn't say a lot.

            At the time of the deal, Tobii was worth USD 360mn, so if Sony had never planed to produce more than the initial batch of 2mn PSVR2, this would put an absolute ceiling of USD180, as beyond that buying Tobii would have been cheaper. And since Sony didn't buy the company incl. all the patents generating fees from others, the engineers, buildings etc., didn't even get exclusivity, and probably expected to sell more than 2mn PSVR2, the actual license fee per headset will be way lower than USD180, probably around 10%-20% of that.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Except the PSVR2 isn't using simple Xperia 4k display. It uses 2 microOLED panels.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            You're mixing up a couple of things here. There are OLED panels with PPI in the hundreds, and microOLED with PPI in the thousands, but no such thing as microOLED panels.

            OLED panel are the flat sheets with integrated self-illuminating red, green and blue OLED like those used in Sony's Xperia phones, radiating in all direction and not particularly bright, which makes them unusable with pancakes. Much smaller microOLEDs like the ones from Sony used in AVP with ~3400 PPI, are lots of white OLED sitting directly on a silicon substrate, each covered by a fixed color filter that is topped by a small lens concentrating and directing the light, which makes them usable with pancake. One of the reasons why the AVP displays cost USD 700 was using dual layer white OLED for the background, and increasing brightness is also the reason for the dual layer OLED panels in iPad Pro. Future microOLED from eMagin will use RGB OLED instead of white OLED plus color filters.

            Both OLED panels and microOLED use organic light emitting diodes/OLED, but are very different technologies otherwise. And the PSVR2 is most certainly using two pentile OLED panels with ~800 PPI. The only HMDs currently using microOLED are Bigscreen Beyond and Apple Vision Pro.

        • Can't forget to factor in R&D, and distribution cost. Parts only cost leaves a lot uncovered.

          • Leisure Suit Barry

            At launch, PS5 was sold at a loss per unit vs manufacture cost, excluding R&D.

            The disc edition only started making as profit after around a year

    • Peter vasseur

      I agree with most of it except the shutdown production. that was never rooted in any factual data. Was just someone opinion/speculation.

  • polysix

    PSVR 2 sales surge over 2,000% after Sony's huge price drop (see redit)

    • ViRGiN

      Amazon had the PSVR 2 for $200 off and, according to the exclusive sample data by The Shortcut, sales of the PSVR 2 skyrocketed by 2,350% over a 24-hour period. In fact, there were more PSVR 2 sales on Sunday than in the first seven months of 2024 combined.

      If they sold 5 units a day, that is whooping 117 units in a day.

      That is nothing more than hype building. Assuming they bought it for PCVR, they are likely already VR users so this absolutetly does not change anything. In fact, it's going to make a whole lot of people disappointed really fast.

      It's never about selling number of headsets, it's about keeping people using them.

      • Peter vasseur

        Yeah but nobody wil make the keep them using if they don’t have enough reach in hmds sold to make money.

        They are actually going to realize that all the fanboys for meta, are lying.

  • nicki gentry

    Maybe Sonys problem isn’t vr maybe it’s because most gamers are pc gamers. I still play Nintendo and PlayStation some times but I spend most of my gaming on the pc, the pc just runs games better, battlezone on the pc is way better than battlezone on ps4.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      If it runs better on the PC depends mostly on the PC you have. I know enough people who have a lesser PC as a PS5

  • Clear price point sensitivity.

    We should have seen this range at launch but it is a great OLED headset.

    The sale is proving a lot about the target price range for XR.

  • JB1968

    After reading the dicussion, the good news is, PSVR2 future is not depending at all on on hose VR-wannabe-experts/enthusiasts here which are continuousliy bitching about any headset that does’t have “Meta spyware inside” sticker on.

    • ViRGiN

      Yep PlayStation vr saved steamvr

      • Peter vasseur

        It did, seems like every third party game is always coming to pc. With a bunch that are only pc because meta and handle them. get zucks cuck out of your mouth, it shorting out what little left of a functioning brain you have .