Not the most unexpected news (pic: Sony)



Slower than expected demand has reportedly forced Sony to slash its PSVR2 shipment forecasts by 50%, as the whole VR market struggles.



As many people have already pointed out, the timing of the upcoming PlayStation VR2 couldn’t be worse. Although the device seems to be a major improvement on the previous one, and good value for money considering its abilities, spending £530 on a VR headset is probably not many people’s priority at the moment.



Sony obviously couldn’t have predicted the war in Ukraine , and the subsequent economic problems, but a new reports suggests that they’ve had to drastically reduce their projections for the launch of the hardware, following lower than expected pre-orders.



The headset is due for release on February 22 and yet Sony has reportedly cut the number of units it plans to ship for launch from two million to just one million.



Naturally, Sony hasn’t made any announcement to confirm this, but supposedly component suppliers have been told that display panel orders will be cut and that the plan is now to ship around 1.5 million headsets by March 2024.



The lower than expected demand isn’t being blamed on anything Sony has done but a general decline in interest in VR, or at least the willingness to pay for it.



Although apparently they did expect demand to be led by interest in exclusive PlayStation VR2 games – even though the only first party title available at launch is Horizon: Call Of The Mountain .



‘The PSVR2 will be no more than an expensive accessory for the PS5,’ analyst Damian Thong told Bloomberg .



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Although it has seen demand drop since its recent price rise, brought on by the increase In component cost, the Meta Quest 2 currently has an 85% share of the VR market, whereas the original PlayStation VR never managed more than 1% – because it requires a PlayStation console to work.



The hype behind Metaverse already seems to have dissipated and while some analysts believe that augmented (AR) or mixed reality headsets may fare better, such as a new device being prepared by Apple, Microsoft recently cut staff in its HoloLens division and has refused to be drawn into the VR business itself.









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