PlayStation VR2 sales reportedly skyrocketed on the first day of the current sale.
If you missed the news, PSVR 2 is currently on sale for $350, a significant discount from its regular price of $550.
David Heaney
The Shortcut reports a source showed it retailer data revealing a 2350% increase in PSVR 2 headset sales on the first day of the sale compared to the day before, and that this represented more units in one day than had been previously sold all year so far.
Price Matters
If accurate, this data underscores just how important price is for the adoption of current VR headsets, and is strong evidence for the argument that PlayStation VR2 was overpriced.
At the regular MSRP of $550 PlayStation VR2 is priced not only higher than its predecessor, but higher than the PlayStation 5 console itself. It was an unprecedented strategy for an accessory of its kind, and one that simply didn't seem to be working.
A few weeks after the first anniversary of PSVR 2, Sony shut down the developer of original PSVR blockbuster Blood & Truth and laid off employees in the studios behind Horizon Call of the Mountain. And in March Bloomberg reported Sony was pausing PSVR 2 headset production to clear a backlog of unsold units.
The $350 sale price seems to have dropped below the threshold that consumers are willing to pay for PlayStation VR2. What isn't known, however, is how many buyers are picking up PSVR 2 at $350 for use with their PlayStation 5 compared to how many plan to use it with the upcoming PC adapter.
While at Meta, John Carmack revealed that the company saw each $100 reduction in price result in an exponential boost in sales, not the linear increase you might assume. And Meta too is currently dealing with the price sensitivity of the current consumer market. At $500 its Quest 3 is also more expensive than its predecessor, and selling slower as a result. To combat, this Meta plans to release a Quest 3S at somewhere around $300 which it hopes will sell significantly higher volume.
As for Sony, the future of PlayStation VR2 will depend on how it reacts to the apparently significant sales boost at $350. Will this be just a limited-time summer discount? Or could it become the new price to keep the momentum going throughout the rest of the year?
