Topic: What is going on with PSVR

After Sammy's article/video talking about how Sony needs to keep PSVR going (and how to do it), I thought I'd start a forum topic on it. I've seen a few videos from different sites talking about the future of PSVR and commenting that Sony might already have dropped it already. They cite a lack of clarity in 2017 games amid studio closures, lack of comments on sales figures and a lack of availability. Even a lack of RE7 marketing on the VR aspect.

There are a lot of warning signs for sure. Here in the UK, it is very very hard to get one or the peripherals. Second hand retailers are charing up tp £100 mark up on launch price for the base unit itself. Games are dropping in price. There are not many announced games in the immediate pipeline. Sony have made zero comment on PSVR in any regard apart from apologising for lack of stock. Marketing seems pretty much nil at this point.

So what does everyone think? Are Sony putting it out to pasture after only a few short months or is there more going on?

For my two pennies/cents... I'm an early adopter and went into it eyes wide open. I love the technology, have loved what games I have played and it was what I wanted. I knew it could go the way of the Vita or Move etc. So I am not complaining as that is what being an early adopter is about - risk. I'd be more annoyed if the device sucked and it was quickly canned.

Personally, I think there is something going on behind the scenes regarding VR. Supply seems non-existant. Is there an issue in the supply chain? That might explain why they are not able to make a marketing push. Can they not produce it for the expected price? I think that dropping VR even if covertly will kill the tech for another generation or two. People won't get burned twice and I think that the video games industry needs new technology and ways to engage gamers. Sony made a very conscious decision to get into VR even though it is currently just PC gamers that can get expensive devices.

If I had to guess, I would say that Sony can't produce enough to go wide with the launch and that may be affecting how much they want to advertise. At the same time, they may still not know HOW to advertise. I would also guess that getting third party support, outside of Indie titles, is expensive or hard to get.

I don't know either. It feels as if the hype for VR slowed down in general. It's difficult to convince third parties to develop for a niche system. Unless they find a way to change the current situation, I think that the lack of games and advertising means that it'll likely get canned sooner than later.

Classic Sony I think. Hope they start releasing some decent games this year for those who jumped right in. I've held off, but feel early adopters have been let down a little. Fingers crossed.

The main issue right now is that you can't buy it. My hope is that they've simply stalled the promotional aspect until they can get enough supply into stores, because there's no point hyping something no one's able to purchase.

I am hoping that @get2sammyb is right, even though I would never buy on. Although I wouldn't put it past Sony to drop it and move on. Does anyone know what it's numbers were over the Christmas season. I am thinking that maybe Sony was hoping that this would have been the must have Christmas item for this year but if it didn't sell as well as they hoped.....

@get2sammyb having it cost as much as the system you also need to play it on doesn't help either (taking into account you also need a PS Camera and some move controllers too)

@FullbringIchigo It doesn't, but I think the point is it's not sticking on store shelves. What I'm trying to say is: it isn't selling below expectations because it keeps selling out. I.e. it's selling as many units as Sony manufacture.

Which means, if they're not happy with the install base, then Sony's the one to blame for that because you can't buy one even if you want to.

@Tasuki As above, you couldn't buy one at Christmas (and still can't). It sold as many units as they manufactured. It's not like there are millions of these things sitting in warehouses. So if it's underperforming, it's because they're not making enough.

@get2sammyb So in other words they pulled a Nintendo.

@Tasuki Exactly.

@get2sammyb; @Tasuki

That is what I find quite odd about the speculation about sales. I read that pre-launch estimates by some analysts were that they would sell 2.6 million in 2016. Now the same analysts think 750,000 units. These are all speculative as far as I can tell coming from retailers but these are prompting articles saying that sales are below expectation. However, major stockists (including on line stockists) have sold out or are getting stock and selling it.

So to me, speculation on sales are meaningless. This isn't a case of too much stock, too little demand (which I can understand) but rather a supply line that is almost chocked close. I wonder what the issue is - I'm not saying that if Sony produced millions of units they would shift them but they should at least have a healthier supply line before they can speculate on if the consoles is selling.

So either hardware is the issue or software is.

@Rudy_Manchego The only thing I can think of is that they're having production problems. It must be that.

@get2sammyb I think that must be it but in a way, that leads to more questions? Was this not anticipated, what has changed? Supply and demand is always a difficult balancing act and companies get it wrong all the time. Too much you have to write off stock and take a loss, generating negative headlines. Too little and people can't buy your product and you get negative headlines and poor sales. That means, to me, that something along the supply chain just isn't working OR they are prioritising other hardware over it.

Do you really think its down to lack of Hardware? What about a lack of meaningful software?

I guess if the hardware isn't available, then the software isn't important and even the software that is available, seems over inflated in price compared to non-VR games. It seems that the PSVR is getting some support from developers with little add-ons in non-VR games - like CoD, Tomb Raiders and their VR mission and of course you could play RE7 in VR (I believe)

Its still very much in its infancy of course, still very much a minority owned device. Considering there are 50m+ PS4 owners and a game like Uncharted 4 only appealed to 20%, for developers investing time and money into a device owned by less than 1m people, they are unlikely to appeal to all owners of PSVR and if they only appeal to 20% of those, that's only 200k sales. Battlezone - regarded as one of the best VR games, has sold a staggering 66k (as of Dec 17th) - RIGS managed 139k . There appears to be a few headsets in stock in places like Currys/PC World too.

I don't think there's any chance that Sony has given up on it. They might do. But not yet.

There's definitely hardware issues that are stopping people picking them up. Here in the UK I've wanted one since November and I've been on numerous "e-mail me when it's back in stock lists" and it's literally just been back in stock in one of the shops since yesterday. This isn't one of those situations where a company pretends it's out of stock. This thing has been off the shelves for months.

That's a problem. Sometimes it creates a frenzy as shoppers desperately search for the item, and other times the product almost gets forgotten about. In this case, it seems closer to the latter than the former.

It should also be pointed out that there's a massive lack of compelling software for it. Resident Evil is the first, true, fully playable AAA campaign on there that has a chance of turning some heads, and even that can be played normally on a PS4. It's an expensive gadget right now, and so unless you have a lot of disposable income, you're probably better served putting the money you'd spend on VR toward games for your PS4. There's plenty of upcoming titles looking worthy of a purchase.

I don't think it's going to go away though. It's just not going to sell a billion units. It's too important for the future for Sony to give up on it. VR has a tremendous amount of potential applications in the future, from sitting you in sports arenas to getting you front row at a concert. It could even put you at E3 or PlayStation Experience watching those conferences as though you're there, from the comfort of your own living room. There's a lot of potential, and Sony may reap the rewards for getting into this game early years down the road.

At this moment in time it makes little sense for the bigger companies to develop for VR, if we guess at 1 million PSVR headsets sold and 50 million PS4s, then it is obvious where the profit margins are stronger. For smaller developers though it is a good place to make games as the lack of AAA competition means they have a much stronger presence in the market. On Steam there are literally hundreds (maybe even over 1000) of VR games, so the system has some legs left yet depending on how Sony play it.

There is no denying though, the real buzz around VR was at the beginning of 2016 and it has died off significantly since then. The platform is losing ground now due to not being able to convince people who weren't early adopters that it is more than a fad and the lack of visible support is compounding the problem. Add to that Sony's past record with hardware that doesn't meet their lofty expectations (even Nintendo did everything they could to push sales of the 3DS when it performed badly and supported the Wii U when no one else would) and it looks a rocky road for PSVR to travel even this early on. I hope it succeeds, but time will tell.

Oh, and for people in the UK after PSVR still, Currys have stock here:
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertainment/gaming...

@BAMozzy Well it is because you can't buy one. Maybe when there's millions of units sitting in warehouses we can look at this from another angle, but the fact is that there's no stock at the moment. Any that comes in sells out instantly.

Amazon haven't had any headsets for weeks.

Curry's literally just got them back in stock, and they offer finance, by the way, to anyone interested that might not want to part with the neck end of 400 notes in one lump.

I've been watching websites for months and there's been no sight of hide nor hair of one of these things. The supply shortage is serious.

@get2sammyb Stock is just 1 issue with VR but its still not a compelling proposition for many. An expensive gimmick with some novelty/intrigue value to it. Had Sony built 10m Units, would it have sold out everywhere? Would there be more hype, more software etc? Who knows - fact is that around 1m units have been sold to a market potential of 53m. That means less 2% of the potential market owns a PSVR headset. Where is the hype, where is the 'must have' reason to buy. I wonder how many of those Headset owners are using their Headset regularly (for VR) or is it collecting dust - waiting for some big reason to use it. I wonder how many of those 2% bought it more for the future prospect/potential than for the 'right here, right now'.

Sony maybe were right to make a very limited number of them. I bet they made more than a million units of the PS4 Pro and that has sold more than PSVR. Its difficult to get total sales figures of 'just' PS4 Pro but according to some reports, since its release, sales of PS4's have jumped 200% and in some places the Pro accounts for 70% of sales. the PS4 has sold over 6m units since the Pro launched and if 70% of those are PS4 Pro's, that's over 4m units - 4x the sales of PSVR which has been out longer. If the demand for PSVR is so great, then why haven't Sony made more, why only build 1m (or less). Its easier to sell out 1m units than 10m units. If only 3% of PS4 owners want PSVR, then some are still going to be out of luck and snap up the few that dribble out. If you only have 1-2 headsets to sell, but a hundred consoles, what do you think will sell out first? Being sold out of a product doesn't always indicate its a better seller or more 'popular' purchase - it could be that Sony only expected 1% of PS4 owners to wanted one and thought 10% wanted a Pro (let alone other gamers who didn't own a PS4) so built many more Pro's.

Its not just about having millions in warehouses either. If they are selling millions a week and replenishing stock to keep up with potential demand, then its not as bad as having millions in warehouses and unable to shift them. I bet Amazon receive regular new stock of PS4's so that they never run out. I bet they didn't get ALL their PS4's in before they launched and once sold, that's it.

Being 'sold out' can be misleading. Would PSVR sell as many units as a PS4 Pro each week - even if there was stock? Would it sell more than the combined PS4 sales? When Xbox released its 'Elite' controller, that sold out until after Christmas too very quickly and theoretically had little reason to buy - at least with PSVR, its required for certain games/features and has a much larger install base to appeal to. That didn't make the Elite more popular, just that MS underestimated the demand of its user base.

We know that certain releases can see a jump in console (and peripheral) sales too. Generate hype but apart from the odd article coming out about the lack of hype, the lack of any real information about the future of it, we are not seeing that much news. I am sure that's what prompted PushSquares article on the subject.

I am going to state that I really don't think that VR is a gimmick. These aren't Wii/Move/Kinect type of things where the fun is had after five minutes and the technology has nowhere to go. The game experiences are different from those on a console - not necessarily better, but different. It is being compared to other peripherals because there really isn't anything else to compare it but if you play it, you feel the potential. I'm not saying some of the games or videos etc. aren't gimmicky but the device can't be written off as such.

It is, though, a niche product. It is never going to sell gangbusters like the PS4 or Pro. Sony can't have expected massive sales given the price and risk.

I do wonder if software purchases for those adopters has been smaller than expected - say they had shifted 750,000 units. If those people aren't buying all available games then maybe there is concern about software support. That said, there are lots of games out there and a lot are pretty good and fun.