If you liken the PlayStation VR, which saw decent success, to the PlayStation One, then PS VR2 should invite comparisons to the PS2, at least in building off its momentum. Which didn’t happen – something which former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida laments. In an interview with Kinda Funny’s Greg Miller about “starting from scratch” with the VR headsets, Yoshida said, “I’m sorry I was wrong – PS VR2 didn’t become PS2.”

When Miller asked what happened to PlayStation VR2, Yoshida simply said, “Uh, well…. let’s move on.” Whether it’s a topic that he can’t comment on due to lack of information or other reasons, the response is still intriguing.

As for upcoming games for the headset, there’s Hitman World of Assassination, which was delayed out of 2024 to March 27th to allow for more polish. Moonhood’s The Midnight Walk, out this Spring, also looks like an aesthetically unique experience. Stay tuned for (hopefully) more announcements and updates in the coming months.

Spin Rythm XD was originally released on PC, and reception has been pretty glowing, with Steam showing an aggregate rating of Very Positive. The game features a bunch of licensed soundtracks to choose from, and you can also plug in MIDI DJ gear if traditional controllers aren’t scratching that itch.

Another point worth noting is that Spin Rythm will also be releasing for PSVR (both PSVR 2 and PSVR) platforms in addition to the PS5 and PS4 base releases – so there’s that to look forward to as well. The game is currently slated to release on July 9 and we will be checking it out when it drops. Stay tuned in the meantime for more details.

The undead will be as relentless as ever, with larger amounts of Walkers and tougher human opponents. You’ll have new weapons like the sawed-off shotgun, chainsaw and SMG, but also beware of The Axeman, a powerful enemy who won’t stop pursuing you.

A brand new faction, the Exiles, is also added and provides significant rewards if you help them. You could also take them by force, continuing the first game’s premise of helping or hurting your fellow survivors.

Developer Skydance Interactive hasn’t revealed what’s next for the series, but it is working on a new VR action RPG called Behemoth. It’s out in Fall 2023 for Meta Quest 2, PlayStation VR2 and PC VR headsets.

On some level, this does make sense – in spite of the general certainty around VR being the next great tech paradigm for not just video games, but computing as a whole (remember, Facebook rebranded itself into a VR oriented company at the height of its powers and prominence, and even companies like Apple were looking into investing in the format), it just never quite caught traction the way you might expect. Meta Quest 2 (née Oculus Quest 2) has certainly done well for itself, selling almost 15 million units globally, and becoming the de facto VR platform for a mainstream audience. But that’s essentially the level of success we are talking about here – the bestselling VR system has sold 15 million. The others? Much, much less than that (given that Meta Quest 2 is the dominant VR platform after all).

Sony’s own original entry into the VR market was the PSVR, and it sold… actually fairly well, with 5 million units sold globally. Now, in a vacuum and in the immediate context of the discussion, those numbers aren’t quite so bad, are they? The PSVR sold a third of the dominant VR platform, and selling 5 million of anything is hardly anything to scoff at. But business decisions, especially financial ones, are never made in a vacuum, and in the broader context, the PSVR’s performance starts to look less impressive, and raises the question of why a follow-up exists at all – and certainly, why in the state it does (we’ll get to this bit shortly).

Just as a reference, the PlayStation 4 sold roughly 115 million units worldwide, meaning that very literally less than 1 in 20 of PS4 owners were willing to buy the PSVR. This, by the way, was in spite of heavy discounts, great bundling, and some not insignificant software support. At the peak of the PSVR’s life cycle, you could buy one for $200, and it would come bundled with some amazing games, such as Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, Iron Man, Gran Turismo Sport… and sometimes even multiple games.

This was also at the peak of VR hype. You know how I alluded to that period where the entire tech world was convinced that VR would be the next step, and there was a lot of optimism and enthusiasm surrounding the format? PSVR came right at the crest of that wave, and rode it to garner a lot of attention, support, and interest. Remember, major third parties were all announcing some fairly big name PSVR projects. Remember when every developer or publisher would have at least some VR project (even if not a full fledged game) planned? And remember how almost all of them hit the PSVR?

That was the market the PSVR launched in, those were the circumstances going in its favor. And with all of that, it managed to sell 5 million units globally.

5 million! That’s a pittance. You know what sold more than 5 million? Very literally every other PlayStation platform ever. This isn’t exaggeration! The original PlayStation sold over 100 million, the PS2 sold over 150 million, the PS3 sold over 80 million, the PS5 is already north of 30 million; the PSP sold over 80 million, even the PS Vita, the one and only real failure the PlayStation brand has had, is estimated to have sold 13-15 million units worldwide (as in, very literally three times as much as PSVR managed).

We’ll get back to the Vita in a bit, because that, after all, is central to the point that I am making here, but for a second, let’s compare the success of PSVR to other PlayStation add ons. The PS Move, for example, sold 15 million units in two years. The EyeToy? 10.5 million units in five years. The PocketStation, which was a Japan-only portable add-on for the PlayStation, sold 5 million units, and that was exclusive to one market.

So even with everything going its way, the PSVR didn’t do too well, and that’s actually not the platform’s fault, the issue appears to be that for the broader public, VR simply is not appealing enough to sell in anything remotely resembling mainstream numbers. So why, then, did Sony persist in sticking with this segment at all? Why, after PSVR, and after seeing the state of the broader VR market, did Sony decide to do a PSVR2?

I don’t ask this question out of spite, but out of consideration for some very basic and straightforward logistics that Sony themselves admitted to back in 2013-14, when the Vita was floundering after being all but abandoned by them. Sony, back then, admitted that supporting two platforms was an increasingly difficult endeavor, that maintaining two distinct development pipelines, with their own distinct set of services and games, was challenging in an era of resource intensive game development. This explanation rang true! It made total sense!

As games become more and more time and resource intensive to develop, supporting multiple systems at a time becomes increasingly difficult, and so Sony wisely made the decision to focus on their core competences, as well as the market where the bulk of their audience lies – high end home consoles. It’s the exact same problem Nintendo faced in the early 2010s, which led to the infamous struggles of the Wii U and 3DS, and which led Nintendo to consolidate their own pipeline and platforms into one hybrid system – once more, we’ll get back to the Switch later, but right now, the point of bringing it up is, Sony’s explanation made sense.

What didn’t make sense is Sony then deciding to… split their resources across two distinct platforms and pipelines anyway, because what do you imagine PSVR is, exactly? Its its own distinct platform, which requires games to be developed for it specifically, and unlike handheld game development, which is just pared back console development, VR game development is a whole other beast, requiring totally different tech pipelines on the development side, and an entirely different set of skills and considerations to be done properly. In other words, it is much more difficult to spread your resources across a console and a VR platform, than it is to do that across a console and a handheld.

If Sony was always going to split resources, why not just stick with the handheld market? Their decision to abandon it does make sense in context of when it was made – this was in the early 2010s. The PS Vita had face planted spectacularly, even Nintendo was struggling to get the 3DS to gain traction, and general wisdom at the time was that dedicated game portables were dead, more or less subsumed by the mobile and tablet gaming market. On the other hand, VR was a promising new frontier with the potential for what then appeared to be massive growth, and with its high tech trappings, potentially very appealing to the audience Sony had cultivated for PlayStation. Deciding to drop the handheld market in favour of the VR one at the time made total and absolute sense! No arguments there at all.

But now, when the state of the VR market, and the performance of the PSVR itself, is on hand and readily referenceable, the decision to double down on VR makes no sense at all. And they’re not just doubling down on the VR market, they are doubling down on it while also stripping away a lot of the advantages the PSVR had that helped it find the traction that it did find in the market. The cost of PSVR2, for example, is eye wateringly high, with its sticker price being at least as much as the PS5 itself in most countries, and higher in several. That sticker shock, which comes right as we are reportedly entering economic recession in years, is already an issue in and of itself, but the PSVR2 also launches in an era where the VR optimism is dead, and the bulk of the development community has decided to jump off the train.

You won’t get an EA Star Wars game with VR compatibility on PSVR2, you’re not getting a Batman Arkham VR game, you’re certainly not getting Bethesda VR games, given that Bethesda is now, you know, owned by Xbox.

Except Horizon, nothing major has been announced from PlayStation Studios! The original PSVR had either full or partial VR support for several Sony games – Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, Concrete Genie, Dreams, Gran Turismo Sport, Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, RIGS, Farpoint, Wipeout Omega Collection… remember all those? Games fully playable in VR, games with VR specific modes, games that were VR exclusive, you got everything.

Most of Sony’s bigger IP and developers sat PSVR out (a whole other issue that this really isn’t the place to get into), but there was still a lot. Do you want to know what the PSVR2 has announced from Sony so far? Horizon: Call of the Mountain, and Gran Turismo 7 being fully playable in VR on it. That’s it. That’s all that has been confirmed. This $550 headset is three weeks away from release, and I don’t even know what games I can expect on it from the platform holder. And while I would love to have the faith that Sony will surely support it with their best games and teams, a) they likely won’t, Sony never supports secondary platforms and hardware well (just look at how badly the Vita or even the original PSVR were treated on this front) and b) if you are asking people to buy this extremely expensive peripheral for an arguably expensive console, then you should probably give them some reassurance upfront, rather than holding your cards close to the chest.

Even games aside, the PSVR2 is doing a lot of things that seem to be going against the common recipe for “success” (such as it is) in the VR market – the current trend for VR success mandates wireless headsets. The PSVR2 is wired (though the jumble of wires and breakout boxes that the original PSVR involved have been streamlined to just one). The current trend for VR success is for standalone headsets. The PSVR2 is tethered. The current trend in the VR market is cheap headsets; the PSVR2 is $550 (on top of a $500 console, to be clear), and while, yes, the tech that it packs is amazing, and the price is actually very fair given that, and the PSVR2 is actually cheaper than the original PSVR with inflation considered, that’s not how the market approaches these things.

The average person who might have some interest in PSVR2 but be put off by the price won’t be thinking “okay, the economy is tough and my finances are tight, but it’s okay to spend $550 plus tax on the PSVR2, which has very few games announced for it right now, because the tech is great, and because with inflation considered, I am actually paying less than I would have for the PSVR back in the day.” Arguably, no real person thinks like that, that entire line of counterargument is bunk. The PSVR2 isn’t even building on the success of its own predecessor, with it not being backward compatible, and games having to be updated on an individual basis by developers before they are playable on the PSVR2.

Which now returns me to what is ultimately the point of this whole article – if Sony were going to continue splitting their resources, why did they decide to stick with VR? Again, this isn’t about the original PSVR, as I mentioned, the decision made sense at the time. But in the present day context, the VR market has been shown to be making minimal inroads, and even Sony’s own first VR product was, at most, a heavily caveated success.

You know what market isn’t dying, but thriving? Portables. The market that Sony confidently gave up for dead back in the day made a stunning resurgence off the back of the Switch, which, at 115 million consoles sold, and sales accelerating six years into its life cycle, is currently en route to becoming the highest selling system of all time. The Switch is managing this, by the way, without any price drops. It has demonstrably proven that there is a market for portables, which is something we are seeing in the smattering of imitators that have come up in its wake, the most prominent of which, the Steam Deck, is another huge success in its own right!

Let’s talk about the Steam Deck for a second. It’s a portable system with no exclusives, just the ability to play a portion of your existing library portably. It has already sold over a million units in a year. Before Valve did their fan favorite portable, though, they also did a high end VR headset, a high end VR headset that they pushed with the long awaited next Half-Life game in Half-Life: Alyx. Backed with such a high end, high caliber title from Valve, do you know how much the Valve Index sold? 149,000 units in its first year on the market. You can actually take the lifetime sales of the Index and the HTC Vive (the first VR hardware Valve worked on, albeit in collaboration with HTC) and combine them, and the Steam Deck has still outsold them in a year. With no exclusive games.

All of which is to say, there is a thriving market for portables (given that portables actually represent a real world use case for most people). You don’t have to invest in the portable market, and I can see the logic in not wanting to split your resources… but if you are already doing that, which Sony is, then why are you investing in VR over portables? What sense does that even make? What was the decision making process, not just financially, but also economically, which considers factors such as opportunity cost, which somehow led Sony to this decision?

A Sony portable could have continued subsisting on the kind of low- and mid-tier first party support Sony provided the first PSVR, and it absolutely would have had no shortage of games to play, because the Switch exists – and if you are making games for the Switch (which, see above, pretty much everyone is at this point), then why not also put them on the PS handheld? We no longer live in the era of specialized boutique hardware like the 3DS and Vita, which made multiplatform development across those two difficult.

The Switch uses standardized hardware, development tools, and development pipelines, and any Sony portable would too (in fact, the Vita was actually the first handheld to do that). Any game hitting the Switch or the Steam Deck (which, between the two of them, they cover very literally almost every new game that comes out at this point) would also hit the PS handheld, because why not? Third parties alone could carry it. It would probably not sell Switch levels, it might not even sell PSP levels. But even if it sold 30-40 million units, that would be six to eight times more than the PSVR. And, perhaps most importantly, Sony would still have maintained a meaningful presence in the consumer and development community of Japan, rather than more or less ceding that entire market to Nintendo wholesale and allowing them to encroach upon PlayStation’s territory in terms of success and software support even more.

I just cannot wrap my head around this. What was this decision making? I mean, I know what it was, it was wrong is what it was, but to watch it play out in real time is flabbergasting. Sony has decided to split their resources, and they are going with the VR market over the portable one. I appreciate VR, and I really do hope the kinks that prevent it from catching on are worked out sooner than later, so that the format can hit its full potential, but at this point it is abundantly clear that for the broader market, VR holds less  appeal.

It is an answer to a question no one is asking. To split your resources for that, versus portables, where the financial and strategic advantages would be immense in comparison, and taken on their own as well, is just mind boggling. I wish the PSVR2 well, but in the here and now, if you were to ask me about this entire sequence of decisions and events, I would say this represents some of the poorest decision making ever by Sony in their entire history in the gaming market.

May they prove me wrong.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

It remains to be seen what it will showcase, but the headset’s presence makes sense since it launches on February 22nd, 2023, for $549.99. PlayStation VR2 includes a 4K OLED panel, with each display having a 2000×2040 resolution. In addition to tracking movements cameras mounted on the headset, the eye tracking allows for dynamic foveated rendering.

There are also the new Sense controllers, which provide haptic feedback and finger detection. In terms of games, the headset launches with over 30 titles, including Horizon Call of the Mountain, The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR, Resident Evil Village’s VR mode, Moss Book 1 and 2, Crossfire: Sierra Squad, and much more. Stay tuned for more details when CES 2023 rolls around.

Horizon Call of the Mountain stars a new character, Ryas, as he ventures across the Carja and Nora lands while investigating a new threat to the Sundom. All the elements of the previous games, like climbing, hunting machines with a bow, and crafting, are included. The difference is that players can explore in a 360-degree area and use the PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers for interacting.

New quests, lore, and characters can also be expected, though familiar faces like Aloy will also return. Horizon Call of the Mountain is out on February 22nd, 2023, for PlayStation VR2. It’s one of over 20 launch titles for the headset. Check out the pre-order trailer below, which features scenes from the gameplay reveal trailer.

As for what the news could be, whether it’s new gameplay or details, that remains to be seen. Unlike Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, Horizon Call of the Mountain focuses on a new character named Ryas. As a former Shadow Carja, he investigates a new threat against the Sundom, encountering familiar machines like the Thunderjaw.

Of course, Aloy will also appear at some point, but there will be many new characters to interact with. Horizon Call of the Mountain is out on February 22nd, 2023, alongside the PlayStation VR2. A bundle containing the headset and a download code for the title will be available to pre-order later this month for $599.99.

Ready to step into the world of Horizon?
Keep your eyes on our channels this week for more news regarding Horizon Call of the Mountain, the upcoming VR adventure from Guerrilla and @FirespriteGames! pic.twitter.com/nQMNZUJ3J7

— Guerrilla (@Guerrilla) November 14, 2022

Another major update for the headset was dropped in similarly unceremonious fashion, when Sony announced the PS VR2’s release date and price with an update on the PlayStation Blog. And how to put this mildly- it didn’t go well. When it launches on February 22, 2023, the PS VR2 will cost $549.99. There’s backlash against the announcement has been nearly anonymous, and it’s not hard to see why. And frankly, it’s a little hard to understand why Sony thought it was a good idea to launch the headset at this price. Because really, logic would dictate that things are going to go poorly for it.

In fact, the deeper you look into the price, the stupider it seems. $549.99 is a ridiculously steep price for PS VR2 as it is, but it’s also worth remembering that this is a peripheral, which means you can’t use it unless you have the PS5- which, somehow, is cheaper than the headset. Yes, we live in a world where a console’s peripheral is significantly costlier than the console. No, it’s not exactly a new occurrence – Sega went berserk with this sort of stuff back in the day – but it was stupid back then, and it’s still stupid now.

And of course, the PS5 itself isn’t exactly a cheap purchase either. The discless version costs $400 while the regular model costs $500- either way, that’s already a pretty hefty chunk of money you’ve had to pay before you even purchase the PlayStation VR2. Once you do purchase it, you have, at the very least, spent $950- over a thousand if you have the PS5 model that comes with a disc drive. And you haven’t even spent any money on games yet!

Virtual reality is a niche subsect of the market – the most successful VR headset on the market is still a long, long way off from breaching even the 20 million units sold mark – so it’s hard to understand why exactly Sony has deemed it wise to launch a new niche hardware product at such a steep price, and right in the middle of a global recession, at that. It’s not like the VR space is lacking in options, in spite of how niche it is, so it’s not like people who’re interested in VR are going to have no other option but to buy a PS VR2. Something like the Quest 2 – a respectably powerful device that is much more convenient to use and has a solid library of games – will set you back between $400-$500 (after its recent price hike), which isn’t necessarily cheap either- but you’re not going to need an already-costly console to be able to use that. You can just jump into it straight away.

With anything new hardware launch, the ultimate question is always this- does its library of games justify its price, no matter what the price is? So far, the answer is no. Of all the games that have been officially announced so far, there aren’t a great many that have looked unmissable. Yes, Horizon Call of the Mountain, which is going to be a launch title, has looked promising, but there isn’t exactly a crowd of people out there who’re absolutely dying to get their hands on the game at any cost. Firewall Ultra is in development for PS VR2, and it’s looking good so far, but again, it’s not exactly what you’d call a killer app. Same with the likes Resident Evil Village and The Dark Pictures: Switchback- promising games, yes, and potentially great experiences. But enough to make the vast majority of people want to go out and buy $550 on the headset? Unlikely.

Looking through other games that have been confirmed for the headset so far, it’s hard to point to any one of them as the system-selling game that any new hardware launch that is this pricey needs to have right off the bat. In fact, the vast majority of them are easily accessible on other devices. The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution is looking promising, but it will also be coming to the Quest 2 and the original PSVR. No Man’s Sky VR? Available elsewhere. The Light Brigade? Also coming to the original PS VR. Cities VR? Available elsewhere. Hello Neighbor: Search and Rescue? Also coming to the original PS VR. The list goes on. The one game that would have been an exception to this, the one game that would have convinced many to go out and buy the headset in spite of not being exclusive to it, would have been Half-Life: Alyx– but that announcement, sadly, is yet to be made.

Of course, it’s no secret that as is the case with any PlayStation hardware, the PS VR2 is going to rely heavily on Sony’s first party output- Horizon Call of the Mountain is going to be an early example of that, seemingly. But here’s the thing- so far, Sony has announced nothing for it other than Horizon. If, at the very least, we knew that there were promising flagship first party titles coming to PS VR2 down the road, we’d have that to look forward, but even that isn’t the case right now.

Besides, how much will Sony want to split its development pipeline to allocate resources to VR development? PlayStation is already making a push for live service experiences as it is, while premium console titles are going to continue to be a focus as well- will Sony want to make sacrifices on either of those fronts to focus on premium VR titles, or will it instead hand out VR games to external or smaller internal teams? The former seems almost impossible, and the latter is far from ideal, and unlikely to lead to good games. After all, handing off first party titles to other teams was exactly the approach that Sony took with the PlayStation Vita, and look where that got them- the handheld device’s first party support was poor, especially by Sony’s standards, and most of the first party games it did get were disappointing (to say the very least).

Given its unreasonably steep price, the easy availability of established competitors, the less-than-stellar first impression its software support has made, and the inherently niche nature of VR as a medium, it just seems virtually impossible that the PlayStation VR2 will be able to even come close to achieving the sort of success that Sony is expecting. Reports have claimed that Sony is looking to ship over 2 million units of the headset in the first quarter of 2023 itself, but it seems unlikely that it will be in that sort of demand, given the circumstances of its launch. Right now, the PS VR2 seems to be doomed to the fate of the PS Vita- a promising piece of hardware let down by baffling financial decisions.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

The headset’s pricing has been revealed as well, and it’s fair to say that it’s a little steep. It will retail for $549.99 / €599.99 / £529.99 / ¥74,980. During the headset’s “initial launch phase”, players in the US, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg will only be able to pre-order it through PlayStation’s online store. Pre-orders are kicking off on November 15.

Sony has also unveiled a PSVR2 bundle that will also include launch title Horizon Call of the Mountain. Read more on that through here.

A new charging station for the PlayStation VR2’s new Sense controller has also been unveiled. It uses a click-in design that will allow players to charge their controllers without having to connect to a PS5 console. It will cost $49.99 / €49.99 / £39.99 / ¥5,480.

Earlier in the year, Sony announced that PlayStation VR2 will not be backward compatible with original PSVR titles- though reportedly, many developers are working on PSVR2 versions of their PSVR games.

A recent report claimed that Sony is aiming for an ambitious launch for the new virtual reality headset, with over 2 million units expected to be manufactured by March 2023. Read more on that through here.

Pre-orders for the game will be going live later this month, while Sony has also unveiled a new bundle that will include the PSVR2 and a download code for the game. Check out the image below. The bundle will cost $599.99 / €649.99 / £569.99 / ¥79,980.

Interestingly, Sony has also confirmed that the PlayStation VR2 will launch with over 20 launch titles, so there will be more to look forward to for players beyond just Horizon. 

Horizon Call of the Mountain will launch exclusively for PSVR2 on February 22, 2023. Check out a recent gameplay trailer through here.