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VR Winter

The PlayStation VR2 will get a drastic price cut, but that might not be enough

This could revitalize the platform—or demonstrate that things aren't going well.

Samuel Axon – | 153
A white VR headset with front-facing cameras one one wire attached, alongside two ergonomic controllers
The image of the PlayStation VR2 headset and controllers that Sony shared on social media when announcing the release window. Credit: Sony
The image of the PlayStation VR2 headset and controllers that Sony shared on social media when announcing the release window. Credit: Sony

Sony's first PlayStation VR for the PlayStation 4 hit stores at the right price at the right time and ended up being one of VR's biggest hits. The PlayStation 5's PlayStation VR2? Not so much, unfortunately. In either an effort to clear unsold inventory, an attempt to revitalize the platform, or both, Sony has announced it's dropping the price of the headset significantly.

Starting in March, the main SKU of the headset will drop from $550 to $400 in the US. Europe, the UK, and Japan will also see price cuts to 450 euros, 400 pounds, and 66,980 yen, respectively, as detailed on the PlayStation Blog. Strangely, the bundle that includes the game Horizon: Call of the Mountain (originally $600) will also drop to the same exact price. That's welcome, but it's also a little bit difficult not to interpret that as a sign that this is an attempt to empty inventory more than anything else.

The headset launched in early 2023 but has suffered from weak software support ever since—a far cry from the first PSVR, which had one of the strongest libraries of its time. It didn't help that unlike the regular PlayStation 5, the PSVR2 was not backward-compatible with games released for its predecessor.

About a year ago, there were reports that Sony was temporarily pausing production because it wasn't able to move the inventory it already had. Later, the company released an adapter and some software for getting it running on PCs. That made it one of the most attractive PC VR headsets, at least on paper. However, setup was clunky, and some features that were supported on the PS5 weren't supported on PC.

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PSVR2 games are still getting announced and released, but the VR market in general has slowed down quite a bit in recent years, and most of the remaining action (such as it is) is on Meta's Quest platform.

Opinion: Weathering a VR winter

You could either interpret these price cuts as an effort to tap unaddressed demand to increase the install base and put the platform in a better position or as a sign that the platform is winding down. It's possible Sony is doing this to see which way it'll go.

The PC rollout seemed like a sincere effort, even though the teams behind it may have faced technical or resources barriers to making it as smooth and complete an experience as it ideally would have been. (I tried it and it worked, but I returned to my Oculus Rift S even though the PSVR2 had much better specs, just because it was so much more seamless to use with a PC.)

From a hardware enthusiast's point of view, it's too bad. The PSVR2 has a gorgeous OLED display (which is uncommon among VR headsets but clearly superior to LCD for many types of games) and supports features like eye tracking that typically only appeared in much more expensive head-mounted displays even before the price cut. Plus, it's even easier to set up and use with a PlayStation than its predecessor and comes bundled with a particularly good exclusive in Horizon: Call of the Mountain.

In other words, it's a strong product in the VR marketplace, with its lack of backward-compatibility arguably being its only major flaw. Unfortunately, though, the PSVR1 arrived during a VR spring, and the PSVR2 during a VR winter. There are still studios making good VR games for PC, Meta Quest, Apple Vision Pro, and other platforms, but the gold rush of the 2010s is over, and the PSVR2 seems to have struggled to secure a large enough install base to make it worth making ports for it.

Time will tell if a drastic price cut will be enough to entice a now-larger-than-ever PlayStation 5 install base (and some brave PC VR enthusiasts) to invest so that third-party developers will have more incentive to bring their titles over. I genuinely like the PSVR2, but I nonetheless wish I were more optimistic than I actually am.

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Samuel Axon Senior Editor
Samuel Axon is a senior editor at Ars Technica, where he is the editorial director for tech and gaming coverage. He covers AI, software development, gaming, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and he is a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development.
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