Sony has reportedly halted production on PSVR2 due to amassed unsold inventory, according to Takashi Mochizuki (Bloomberg)
- Thread starter rinzler
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Consoles revenue comes mostly from software because they only usage is to play games and their hardware is cheaper, and consoles are on a mature mainstream position stage of their market, where growth is stagnant.
VR+AR/MR instead have several more usages outside gaming for research, development, military, health (hospitals) and other ones where they only buy get one or none software per device. Hardware also is normally way more expensive, so produces way more revenue per unit. And also VR is only on the early stages of its market, at the point where still isn't mainstream, there are less users but pay a higher premium device and the market is having an important growth and specially has an important growth ahead.
VR has been growing and is expected to continue growing as shown in the multiple graphs from the top market firms, but it's several years away from becoming mainstreaam. Same as when Sony invested in DVD, Blueray, 4K, game subs or cloud gaming to name a few technologies or markets where Sony invested on their early stages. We could even include here PCs when they invested in the MSX computers, in consoles where they invested in PS1 when consoles were a tiny market compared to now or mobile gaming, when they started to make mobile games in the early 2000s for Java phones.
Sony never expected that PSVR1 or PSVR2 would become mainstream: they are making a long term investement there, looking at the future.
Sony sold over 5M of PSVR1 and was happy with it because it meant they were the market kings of the new market of the non-standalone VR (and the only ones in console), a market which still is in early stages and they want to be well postitioned for the future once it continues growing and becomes mainstream. VR also helps Sony consoles as unique selling point compared to Xbox or Nintendo.
Vita instead got an awful market share in the mature handheld console market, selling around a third or a fourth part of what PSP sold. Sony decided to move away focus on the high end home console market that they dominated and Nintendo decided to move away from the high end home console market and focus in the handheld market that they dominated.
So according to you the Sony games Horizon CoM, Gran Turismo 7, Firewall Ultra and Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord and the over 180 3rd party games they had announced at launch window for the first year don't exist?
The only evidence we have of PSVR2 sales vs initial targets (their target was to outsell PSVR1) is the graph that Sony shared comparing the launch window sales of PSVR2 and PSVR1, where PSVR2 was performing better.
Since then we only heard Sony saying a couple times that they are ok or happy with PSVR2 performance but that -obviously- their priority and main focus is PS5.
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Like I said, it's the graph I don't like - how people are using it, how it's titled and how the figures are 50% tales-from-my-arse. Wasn't really commenting on the state of VR2 at all.
So yeah, they're both VR headsets, that's about it. Very different products in terms of what they offer and how they go about offering it. In a parallel to the PS vs xbox situation of the past few decades, one is playing by rules that it has to make business sense and return a profit while the other is funded by obscene excesses of the larger company's real business efforts rather than its own.
Not saying you are, but anyone attempting to downplay what Sony are doing in VR by comparing to Meta is not really proving anything other than Meta have a fuckton of money they're willing to burn through in order to make the metaverse happen (lol). Anyone doing so, particularly with the use of that graph, is being a wee bit extra. There's plenty of other angles to come at Sony at on that front without this fantasy Meta vs. nonsense.
IMO, concerning the questionable VR2 numbers, it's actually pretty amazing Sony had the market share in headset sales over the year and each quarter before Q4, even if it is all numberwang. And Meta's product being an easily affordable gift-ready stand-alone toy ensure it's always doing extra big numbers around the holiday period, although down 40% y-o-y iirc. Quest 2 was and is heavily discounted but not end-of-life and is a big part of those numbers and will continue to be as long as they keep producing it and offering it at that kind of discount vs Q3. Sony's headset being a peripheral requiring a specific console platform to function, one that now has an install base of 50 million but which grew by ~18M over that same period, kinda suggest it's done pretty good if people think it's done anything like those kinds of numbers. It's nothing alarming or outside expectations IMO. But if people want to try to prove otherwise that's fine, not gonna stop them as it's a sensible conclusion to make as long as points are evidenced with anything more than just feels. But I'd take even feels over crap like that graph any day, lol.
As I posted earlier, Mochzuki's take is it's a halted production line and there's warehouses full of the things - DOOM! But it could just as easily be something that was planned while they transition to PC-compatible SKU production or any number of other things. Someone wants to say opening up to PC is a negative, cool, say why and all good. Someone want's to say it's a positive but a year too late, there's reasons why people will agree with that as well. Again, wasn't commenting on any of that.
But since these points have been put forward I'll say this - Fuck Meta. Fuck them generally of course because they're filth, a blight on the planet, but in particular fuck them now in the context of this post for what they've done to VR gaming's future. Buying up huge swathes of industry talent while zuck had his head deep up his own metaverse arse - that hurt the entire VR game development scene when so much effort was spent targeting weak hardware in terms of features and power and took it away from what was a very friendly, co-operative dev community with a one-for-all attitude in the early days. When the bubble finally bursts - when the metaverse dream ends and Reality Labs are folded into nothingness - it's going to have set back VR's evolution massively. For all their discount millions of hardware units out there in the hands of people the harm done as Q2 lingers and Meta persists is real. Far from being the saviours of VR as some once claimed, in many ways they've irreparably scarred it, working with fantasy-land budgets while continuing to hemorrhage money, making record losses in Q4 despite being propped up by moving a number of AI projects under their umbrella, all of that and more. This whole metaverse jaunt's cost them $16B during the period that graph covers, and for that they saw 3.7M sales - woop-de-fucking-doo! Running total is well over $40B to date since they started giving out figures for the division separately. Point being, comparing what Reality Labs are doing with hardware to what a dedicated console gaming peripheral is doing is dumb af. They're speed-running that xbox parallel while actually becoming market leader. So if anyone wants a good reason there you have it - a reason why Sony aren't willing to throw more and more cash and resources at VR - whatever efforts they go to Meta will always be able to throw more at theirs. If Sony stepped up and really tried to take huge slices of Meta's market, they'd be met by huge pushback. Ticking over int he background suits everyone (except hungry VR2 gamers, lol). But in terms of good business, keeping it chill and within sensible limits seems fine. Let Meta worry about Apple and what they're doing, wait it out until they pull the plug as they inevitably will as the losses keep piling up with no return in sight, and see if VR's still worth being involved in when that time comes.
Nothing wrong with harsh criticism where appropriate. I don't think the PS VR2 is doing anything like as well as it could or perhaps should be doing, but there are sensible reasons why not stepping up makes sense right now. It exists as an enthusiast peripheral, just one more thing a subset of the userbase wants to take advantage of, and that's the best place to let it continue. Throwing money and resources, trying to force things in the current financial climate would be foolish, it came at exactly the right time to be stifled by this. No doubt it could be doing better with more support, but that support comes at a cost and that probably hasn't made good enough business sense for them. It could have had way better unit sales with day 1 PC support because, back then particularly, PC had nothing that could live with it for anything like the same outlay a year ago, but then again unit sales aren't everything - 100% of all software sales on PS VR2 currently go through Sony and 0% will on PC unless they throw even more money at a Sony store nobody wants to have to deal with. Not happening. If PC compatible VR2 now makes better business sense due to volume and getting better support for PS VR2 games via PC creators, maybe that's OK. Sony do continue to market the thing on the quiet despite what people say, it's not abandoned and it's not sunset, it's just not their main focus, not anywhere near that, and rightly so - never will be.
There are unprecedented pressures on every aspect of the business right now, huge turnover for effectively ~fuckall return. If I had to point to the top 5 aspects of what PS have been doing wrong to get to this point, PS VR2 wouldn't be close to being one of them. In fact it probably has a nice big black number next to it rather than the red of other aspects of the business.
