psvr 2 (34) — Photo by Road to VR

PSVR 2 Discount More Than Doubled Usual Sales Volume, But Quest Still Leads

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Aug 8, 2024

PSVR 2 got its first big sale the other week which resulted in a large lift in sales volume for the headset in the US.

At $550 MSRP, PSVR 2 is actually more expensive than the PS5 console that powers it, at $500. That’s made it a tough sell for some, especially with Quest 3, its nearest competitor, priced at $500 and not requiring a tethered console.

Demand for Sony’s VR headset may be greater than it appears however, with many seemingly willing to buy once the price is right.

Sony discovered this after its first big sale on PSVR 2 the other week, which dropped the price of the headset alone to $350 (37% discount), and the price of the Horizon bundle to $400 (a 33% discount).

In just the week or so that the sale was active, we can see that sales volume for headset more than doubled on Amazon US compared to the prior months.

PSVR 2’s short-lived Summer sale may tell us something about the forthcoming holiday period, the time of year when the most VR headsets are sold and the biggest sales are generally seen. Sony now has a clear idea of how much its headset sales could ramp up if it offers the same deal during the holiday, or perhaps an even better one.

While the discount appears to have resulted in a nice boost in unit sales for PSVR 2, to put things into perspective we can see that it’s still a far cry from the number of Quest 2 and Quest 3 units Meta has been selling.

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ViRGiN

Choo choo, PCVR has been saved by biggest console manufacturer!
Can't wait for every YouTuber to benchmark it with some retro games like HLA.
- namekuseijin
  
  Lol no
  
  psvr 2 has been saved by pcvr…
  
  I think as a whole is pretty cooked tho, as that hipster youtuber would say…
Ivan

It would be interesting to see the Quest 2 and Quest 3 sale numbers/graph separate, like how you provided for the PSVR 2 with and without the bundle. I'm curious to see how it compares with just the Quest 3 sales, I imagine Quest 3 sells more but having the numbers to verify is nice.

It will be interesting to see these graphs again after the holiday sale, where the rumored Quest 3S may also appear.
- namekuseijin
  
  Quest is basically selling on amazon as much as regular consoles like switch and PS5, not as a peripheral like psvr 2
  
  because that's what it really is: a console to play VR games. plus many other uses beyond gaming…
- Arno van Wingerde
  
  Yes: @benz145 : if the numbers are available: why don't we use Amazon USA sales numbers as a first indicator of uest2 vs. Quest3 sales and the various versions?
polysix

Well PSVR2 sales are also now having another lift now all the super positive reviews are out about the PC ADAPTER from all those big YT VR guys. Finally people might start to understand why OLED and display port is so much better for quality VR over LCD and compressed video. I've had many HMDs inc quest pro and nothing has been better at immersing me than PSVR2 (esp on PS5 with the extras)

Frankly it matters not how much quest is selling, generally, that's more a VR wide issue and they'll drop off over time as OLED and microOLED HMDS take off again, just like we initially started with back in DK2, Vive and Rift CV1 days.

Standalone will always be a more popular/easily sellable product to masses, but doesn't mean it's better for VR nor better for VR devs who will grow tired of the limitations in time.
- ApocalypseShadow
  
  Writer couldn't just let PS VR 2 have its moment without downplaying the uptick in sales.
  
  We all know a stand alone, that was subsidized for billions of dollars, that Facebook has burned in a furnace to try and kill any early competition, was going to sell more. But it's not even about Quest. As if they only want that headset as the only thing on the market.
  
  Yes it's a good headset for what it does. Even I admit that after buying Quest 3. But the writer should let other products have their moment without having to compare. As we still don't even have any news on actual sales numbers of Quest 3 at $500+. Not once has Facebook announced sales of Quest 3. Why is that of it's selling so well? Why did they need to close Ready at Dawn if everything's all peachy?
  - VR5
    
    Facts don't care about your feelings. And the graph shows how Quest sales are declining, because they're running out of Quest 2s to sell.
    
    For the price, Quest 3 sales aren't bad, much better than PSVR2 clearly. And they have the 3s to take the place of the Quest 2.
    - ApocalypseShadow
      
      Sales aren't bad. But how many did they sell? My feelings tell me it's not selling as fast as they want it to. They gave away AR2 but could have just as well gave away Ready at Dawn's next game.
      
      Quest 2 has held back game development. Sure BC is nice. But you can count the amount of Quest 3 only games that take advantage of the hardware on one hand.
      
      Clearly it sold more than PS VR 2. It's like comparing cellphone sales to consoles. You don't have to buy a console near the same price for stand alone. Drawback is that game development is limited to Quest 2 graphics with minor texture updates. The system needs more Quest 3 only games. And my feelings tell me I'm right.
      - VR5
        
        If Ready At Dawn had a next game. Sanzaru started work on Wrath II after the first game released in 2019. At that time RaD were working on Lone Echo for PC still. And it didn’t release until much later (2021). Obviously they didn’t have the time to have something ready last year. Or this year.
        
        There must be a reason why they’re being closed and it just might be that there was trouble at the studio. Why do you just assume Meta is closing them for no good reason or that they magically should have something ready last year, with less time to produce? 2 years is just unreasonable even for a shorter game.
  - philingreat
    
    Meta didn't decide to go with standalone, the market did. Back then, Facebook released the Quest 1 and Rift S at the same day, at the same price. The standalone was selling like hotcakes and won.
    
    Meta didn't announce sales numbers of Quest 3 because they never officially announced any sales numbers of any Quest headset.
    - ViRGiN
      
      He is just butthurt that subsidized steam deck has been out for a while, is already on second iteration, and valve deckard is decades away.
    - ApocalypseShadow
      
      It's called predatory pricing. Look it up. No other product could sell that low compared to Facebook pricing. That… Is a FACT.
      - Christian Schildwaechter
        
        Interestingly the USD 50+bn (at MRL)/100bn total estimated investment into XR by Facebook/Meta aren't due to Quest pricing. They sold ~25mn Quest 2 at close to production price. Assuming that as on average USD ~300, all Quest 2 combined cost 7.5bn to built.
        
        So even if they had given them away for free, this would only account for 7.5%-15% of the accumulated cost up to now. But given that they were sold at cost, you actually cannot deduce anything from "50+billion" other than Meta spending insane amounts of money for stuff that isn't even the production of consumer hardware, usually considered insanely expensive all by itself.
      - shadow9d9
        
        Yeah, Sony can barely penetrate the videogame market and has no money and no tech experience.
  - Mike Angel
    
    Recently, Quest 3 seems to be selling around 80,000 units per month. This can be seen from the leaderboard of First Encouters, an MR game for Quest 3 that can be played when setting up Quest 3. As of April 9th, the number of players was 810,000. On May 10th, it was 890,000. On June 14th, it was 970,000. On July 9th, it was 1,030,000. Currently, on August 9th, it is 1,120,000. It is possible to choose not to play this game, so the actual number of units sold may be higher than this. :)
    - ApocalypseShadow
      
      Leaderboards aren't sales numbers.
    - Christian Schildwaechter
      
      For comparison: Quest 2 was released 46 months ago in 2020-10, and has sold an estimated 25mn units. Sales peaked around Christmas and depended a lot on price, selling at lot less at USD 400 and a lot at USD 200, outselling the Quest 3 offered in parallel 4:1 or more. But on average it sold ~545,000 units per month, so almost seven times the 80,000 Quest 3.
    - MeowMix
      
      Kinda. The First Encounters demo must be completed in its entirety for it to track the score. Many ppl don't complete the 10 minute demo the first time the headset starts up, I didn't. So the 80,000 is the floor number of users; what does that represent though ? maybe 50% ?
- Blaexe
  
  The reviews regarding the OLED panels for PCVR are not that good though? Pros are obviously contrast, colors and brightness.
  
  But on the other hand it's less sharp than the Quest 3 even with its compression, noticeable Mura and motion blur due to higher persistence. And then obviously the lenses are a step down.
  
  Overall the consensus seems that the Quest 3 looks better.
  - philingreat
    
    I agree, I know I am in a tiny minority but I don't like OLED. I recently purchased a new TV, looked at all the screens in store and only after at the specs. It was never OLED that I preferred. For me, the contrast is too high, the blacks are too dark. In reality, I have never seen so dark blacks. It doesn't look natural to me, it looks artificial.
    - Blaexe
      
      For TVs I hardly disagree – OLED is the only option there imo. Because you don’t notice the disadvantages nearly as much as in VR headsets.
      
      OLED TVs look much better at home than in extremely bright stores.
    - Andrew Jakobs
      
      There is no such thing as dark blacks, it's either black or it is dark gray. And once you're used to the dark gray of LCD's, real black might seem artificial to you, but it's actually the dark gray you come to associate with black which is not right.
      - Christian Schildwaechter
        
        There are "dark blacks" like Black 4 paint absorbing 99.95% of all visible light, or Vantablack, carbon nanotubes vapor-deposited on e.g. the inside of telescopes for absorbing up to 99.965%. Applied to a surface, they look like a very deep hole, while most mat black paint reflects 2%-4%, making it 100 times brighter. The reflective surface of OLED display plus not perfectly tight light seals mean that even a turned off HMD will look brighter just from minimal environmental light.
        
        So either there are dark blacks, with OLED blacks as remaining environmental light reflection a lot darker than LCD blacks from not fully blocked backlight. If black instead means the absence of light, it doesn't exist in this universe due to reflection and spontaneous photon emission everywhere, and the range of HMDs goes from very dark white (<1000 nits) to darkish gray.
        
        And black can be too black. We use the minimal contours and edges created by environmental light even on dark objects to navigate around them. A car covered in Vantablack looks like a flat cutout, messing with our depth perception, so you really want things to be a (subjective) "natural" dark gray.
- Andrew Jakobs
  
  Sorry, but cable is still the biggest annoyance as most of the VR I do is 'roomscale' type of games, not sitting down in one spot simulators . So to me displayport is the least of the things I care about. VR devs don't care about displayport, all they care about is getting as much people to buy their game as that is what brings the money in. Even on PCVR there are even more things to keep in mind as you still have to care about lowend PC's and not only highend PC's with 4090's in them (which is probably the smallest PCVR group). Yes limitations of processingpower is crap, but it also can make development easier as you only have to mind about one or maybe two SKU's, but it certainly gives you room to actually optimize your game for the hardware, with PCVR trying to really optimize is pretty much useless due to the infinite amount of PC configurations.
  cabled only VR is certainly hot for racing and flying simulators, but that's only one part of VR.
  - David Cano
    
    On my case the cable is not annoying, and if you play some VR games seated or watching movies is even more important to enjoy more quality.
- shadow9d9
  
  Youtubers are a joke. They always hyoe to get clicks.
  
  A loud superminority care about displayports. It is irrelevant. And Oled is worthless on fresnel. Old, old tech.
TonyVT SkarredGhost

The last graph tells a lot
Dale Kirkley

Considering how fast the PSVR2 PC adapter sells out every time they restock it, those sales numbers were driven by almost one thing.
Alex

Could not care less about PSVR2 sales. But I do hope that the connectivity with the PCVR brings an official full motion VR mod for RE4 Remake on Steam.
Ardra Diva

Can't imagine why anyone would use a visor with only half its capabilities (and the good ones not working), that's tethered, and still expensive. That's world-class stubborn fanboi, right there.