I think PSVR2 was dead in the water before it was even released. It was pretty clear that nobody was going to pay that price, then Sony would do exactly what they are doing now, no more development, no more marketing, basically just letting it die a slow death. Which is on par with what they did with PSVR1. This whole PC thing is a low effort last ditch effort.
I remember telling people on Reddit on release day, that this thing was going to be a disaster, and getting down voted to like -144. None of those doornails are here to see this, but man was I fucking right.
Now if they would have priced it at like $199 or $299 maybe, we’d be having a different conversation, and I’m sure there’d be way more games being developed.
Well even then, if the content was there, people would buy it even at its ridiculous price. You have to consider there is a massive amount of PlayStation users so if only 1% of their playerbase has enough money for this, that’s still a ton of people compared to current VR numbers.
So I stand by saying the price is a barrier, but not a problem or dealbreaker. The real issue is just that PSVR1 people are no longer getting support, PSVR2 has few games since they don’t include the previous library. And why buy a PSVR2 if you know they’re going to lock your games into that specific headset? Sony put all that money into hardware and has zero idea how to exist in markets that aren’t already growing, so this was inevitable
I agree with you on the second paragraph for sure. That’s a code issue here. But I suspect that a decision maker holding a budget at a development company, is going to struggle to want to spend development dollars on a product that has saturated 1% or however many percent of the market (we all know it’s super low).
There’s really only three ways to increase saturation though, to incite development: 1 - Create a product that’s a must have, which this pretty clearly isn’t. 2 - Target a core part of the market and bombard them with marketing and special pricing, which they pretty clearly aren’t. Or the ol’ usual go to, 3 - Cut the price to a level where people will make spur of the moment purchasing decisions to buy the product. 3 being about the only way, yet Sony has done none of this.
I remember buying the PSVR back in 2016, and while driving home being like, “Jesus did I really just spend $600 CAD on this?” If this same headset was $199 or maybe max $299 CAD, this wouldn’t even be a conversation and my dumb ass would probably have a PSVR2 downstairs right now, as would many many other people. It would be the ideal Christmas present for many people and kids at that price, especially when some of us have cranky wives that ask us what we want for Christmas, and we always just say I dunno, don’t worry about it. You’d probably would have way more games being developed too, because the thing would probably sell a heck of a lot better. Which brings me to my main point, if they can’t deliver the mainstream headsets in this sort of price range, I kind of question the feasibility of VR as a whole. No one wants to effectively pay for the equivalent of another PlayStation for something that is mostly novelty and of questionable lifespan/usage.
Good points on the saturation thing. My experience in the vr space is that most companies aim right at the middle of all of those goals and fail as a result. The price ends up lower, but not low enough. Software is supported, but not enough. Software is targeted but then turns out underfunded.
In my opinion, Sony should have created a headset targeting $300-$400 and then focused not on just making random good VR games but play off of existing titles.
The reason that works so well is that many people have a favorite PS5 game, why not offer 3D models viewable in VR? Or the maps? Or a shot minigame mode with small bits of content for a low price? These things are relatively cheap to do but have a huge impact on gamers wanting to get into VR.
Resident evil is a great example of this. The Horizon game less so. Either way, use those titles all the time to your advantage. Try to get a VR camera mode in more 3rd person games. Promote VR movies and streaming maybe.
You still have this issue though of pivoting out of a catch-22. No software, no gamers, no money, so no software or hardware. The way to break out of that is by maintaining a library of games and adding to it over time as adopters get on board. This is why them ditching PSVR1 killed the second headset. Build that library to a tipping point like SteamVR and Meta are working on, don’t abandon it.
Sony could’ve done a lot of things to help this push honestly and they did nothing. It’s like none of these companies even know how to exist in experimental spaces anymore and it shows big time.
I think PSVR2 was dead in the water before it was even released. It was pretty clear that nobody was going to pay that price, then Sony would do exactly what they are doing now, no more development, no more marketing, basically just letting it die a slow death. Which is on par with what they did with PSVR1. This whole PC thing is a low effort last ditch effort.
I remember telling people on Reddit on release day, that this thing was going to be a disaster, and getting down voted to like -144. None of those doornails are here to see this, but man was I fucking right.
Now if they would have priced it at like $199 or $299 maybe, we’d be having a different conversation, and I’m sure there’d be way more games being developed.
Well even then, if the content was there, people would buy it even at its ridiculous price. You have to consider there is a massive amount of PlayStation users so if only 1% of their playerbase has enough money for this, that’s still a ton of people compared to current VR numbers.
So I stand by saying the price is a barrier, but not a problem or dealbreaker. The real issue is just that PSVR1 people are no longer getting support, PSVR2 has few games since they don’t include the previous library. And why buy a PSVR2 if you know they’re going to lock your games into that specific headset? Sony put all that money into hardware and has zero idea how to exist in markets that aren’t already growing, so this was inevitable
I agree with you on the second paragraph for sure. That’s a code issue here. But I suspect that a decision maker holding a budget at a development company, is going to struggle to want to spend development dollars on a product that has saturated 1% or however many percent of the market (we all know it’s super low).
There’s really only three ways to increase saturation though, to incite development: 1 - Create a product that’s a must have, which this pretty clearly isn’t. 2 - Target a core part of the market and bombard them with marketing and special pricing, which they pretty clearly aren’t. Or the ol’ usual go to, 3 - Cut the price to a level where people will make spur of the moment purchasing decisions to buy the product. 3 being about the only way, yet Sony has done none of this.
I remember buying the PSVR back in 2016, and while driving home being like, “Jesus did I really just spend $600 CAD on this?” If this same headset was $199 or maybe max $299 CAD, this wouldn’t even be a conversation and my dumb ass would probably have a PSVR2 downstairs right now, as would many many other people. It would be the ideal Christmas present for many people and kids at that price, especially when some of us have cranky wives that ask us what we want for Christmas, and we always just say I dunno, don’t worry about it. You’d probably would have way more games being developed too, because the thing would probably sell a heck of a lot better. Which brings me to my main point, if they can’t deliver the mainstream headsets in this sort of price range, I kind of question the feasibility of VR as a whole. No one wants to effectively pay for the equivalent of another PlayStation for something that is mostly novelty and of questionable lifespan/usage.
Good points on the saturation thing. My experience in the vr space is that most companies aim right at the middle of all of those goals and fail as a result. The price ends up lower, but not low enough. Software is supported, but not enough. Software is targeted but then turns out underfunded.
In my opinion, Sony should have created a headset targeting $300-$400 and then focused not on just making random good VR games but play off of existing titles.
The reason that works so well is that many people have a favorite PS5 game, why not offer 3D models viewable in VR? Or the maps? Or a shot minigame mode with small bits of content for a low price? These things are relatively cheap to do but have a huge impact on gamers wanting to get into VR.
Resident evil is a great example of this. The Horizon game less so. Either way, use those titles all the time to your advantage. Try to get a VR camera mode in more 3rd person games. Promote VR movies and streaming maybe.
You still have this issue though of pivoting out of a catch-22. No software, no gamers, no money, so no software or hardware. The way to break out of that is by maintaining a library of games and adding to it over time as adopters get on board. This is why them ditching PSVR1 killed the second headset. Build that library to a tipping point like SteamVR and Meta are working on, don’t abandon it.
Sony could’ve done a lot of things to help this push honestly and they did nothing. It’s like none of these companies even know how to exist in experimental spaces anymore and it shows big time.