According to a report in Bloomberg News, it appears that Sony is looking to massively ramp up sales of its next-generation PlayStation VR headset over its first iteration in 2016. The company is reportedly looking to launch the platform with over 2 million headsets on hand, and production is already “well underway.”
Supply chain issues that have plagued electronics manufacturers all around the globe are also reportedly not impacting the production of this new headset. Bloomberg’s Takashi Mochizuki is also reporting that Sony plans to massively expand the supply of PlayStation 5 consoles around the same time period as the PSVR2 launch.
That would make it more logistically possible to bundle the two devices and drive more sales of the already bestselling console.
Sony has still yet to publicly divulge an exact release date for the PSVR2 (though any later than April would start to put “early 2023” into question). It’s also yet to share a price for the device. The first PlayStation VR cost $299 at launch in 2016, Sony may need to account for pandemic-driven inflation when it launches its successor next year.
Will Sony sell that many PSVR2 headsets?
Is there good reason to for Sony to be optimistic about PSVR 2 sales? Maybe. Bloomberg pulled data on sales of the Meta Quest 2 from market intelligence agency IDC showing that the headset formerly known as the Oculus Quest 2 sold over 2.8 million units in its first quarter.
It’s a useful comparison, but the sales performance of Meta’s VR headsets aren’t directly comparable to Sony’s. A Meta Quest 2 will soon cost as much as a PlayStation 5, but it’s a standalone device that isn’t tethered to any consoles. Getting a PSVR2 up and running will cost more money and lock players to their living rooms.
On the other hand, Sony’s VR headset will be one of the major competitors for the Quest 2, and will benefit from being an add-on for existing PlayStation 5 owners (there’s at least 22 million of them by now). There’s also likely an audience of virtual reality consumers who will purchase a consumer-grade device not affiliated with the company formerly known as Facebook.
What other metrics will Sony be launching when the PSVR2 launches? Well it will probably want to beat the $2 million in content sales from the Quest’s first two weeks on the market in 2019, and when the holidays roll around in 2023, it’ll want to beat the $5 million in revenue that Meta raked in from the Oculus Store in that time.