Sony pauses PS VR2 production as unsold inventory piles up

Sony The group has stopped its production. PS VR2 The headset raises doubts about the appeal of virtual reality gadgets until it clears a backlog of unsold units, according to people familiar with its plans.

Sale of $550 wearable devices PlayStation 5 According to the people, who asked not to be named because the information is not public, things have slowed down since its launch and stock of the device has been increasing. Sony has produced more than 2 million units of the product launched in February last year, the people said.

According to IDC, which tracks shipments to retailers rather than consumers, PS VR2 shipments have declined every quarter since its launch. Sony’s supply chain has a glut of assembled devices, the people said. Still, IDC’s Francesco Geronimo sees a revival of the product category in the coming years, helped by Apple’s entry. “We forecast the VR market to grow at an average annual rate of 31.5 percent between 2023 and 2028,” he said.

together Meta Platforms, has been one of the leading purveyors of Sony. Virtual reality Gear, but both have struggled to attract enough content and entertainment creators to make their platforms compelling. A similar problem is encountered. Apple’s Much more valuable Vision Pro The headset, as it launched without compatible apps from key entertainment platforms Netflix and Alphabet’s YouTube.

Sony did not respond to requests for comment.

Tokyo-based Sony announced last month that it was shutting it down. PlayStation London division, which focused on creating virtual reality games. The move was part of a wider set of hiccups that also affected in-house studios like Gorilla Games, which worked on PS VR2-exclusive games in its popular Horizon series. Horizon Call of the Mountain.

“The high cost of VR hardware acts as the main barrier to its expansion,” Macquarie analyst Yijia Zhai said. “Currently, there are limited games that support VR devices, and this will also lead to a lack of motivation for players to purchase VR hardware. There is also a reason for this limited content – ​​the development cost of VR games is common. There is much more than titles.

Sony is still working on expanding the range of content available on the headset, and it said in February that it was testing the ability to access PC titles for PS VR2 players.

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