Flop, closures, lack of announcements… The future of PSVR 2 does not seem the most flamboyant

Game news Flop, closures, lack of announcements… The future of PSVR 2 does not seem the most flamboyant

Radio silence

You probably read it when you came to visit us, the site Android Central states that according to its sources, “Sony would significantly cut funding for VR games”. According to the published article, there would only be “very few opportunities for VR game development at Sony”, there would be only “two PSVR 2 games in development” at the manufacturer, projects which could even be canceled, again according to Nicholas Sutrich. This is just one signal among many that tends to show, if proven, that PSVR 2 continues to be in bad shape

It’s been several months since the future of headphones seems very flamboyant. Released on February 22, 2023 at a price of 599.99 euros, the PSVR 2 arrived in a context of widespread price increases. Sold as a premium product with its eye movement tracking functionality and above all enough to display graphics at a resolution of 2000 x 2040 per eye, the accessory has retained a major flaw from its predecessor, namely a mandatory wired connection for function. In a period where a certain Meta Quest 3, standalone, is available at comparable prices, this little problem weighs heavily on the game of comparisons.

See PS5 Console on Amazon

As far as sales of the item are concerned, it’s radio silence. In an interview with the Financial Times dated December 20, 2023, Eric Lempel, head of SIE’s global activities, simply declared that virtual reality was “a somewhat difficult category” for the company. The last official figures date from May 2023. At that time, Sony announced that it had sold 600,000 units in 6 weeks. For more than a year, the Japanese company has done everything it can not to address the VR issue in its results. In an environment where this technology is struggling to break through, Sony has not found the keys for the general public to adopt virtual reality.

---

Open your eyes

Rather than risk making it die slowly on PS5, the PSVR 2 will be able to survive thanks to the PC, unfortunately losing most of its functionality. In all likelihood, Sony’s new virtual reality headset is no longer the center of the manufacturer’s attention. Has he ever been? Recently, the Japanese group laid off many people at Firesprit, a group which has produced many games designed for PSVR with The Playroom VR, Air Force Special Ops: Nightfall, The Persistence and Horizon Call of the Mountain. Sony London, the company behind VR Worlds and Blood and Truth, has closed its doors. There remained hope of seeing PSVR 2 supported by a big first-party project with the Asobi team. Unfortunately, the studio has just revealed its project, Astro Bot, and… it is not a VR game.