The struggle of the PSVR2 is all on Sony’s mishandling and not reflective of the wider industry, the potential here with VR on PlayStation or the potential of VR as a whole. Sony need to do some introspection on how they’re handling devices like this and readjust, not blame everyone else and give up.
The BoM on this thing is ~$270, additional costs and R&D recoup over the course of a fair sell through bring that in to the mid-300s at worst. Instead the money men panicked and wanted rapid cost recoups, so marked it all the way up to $529 for filthy levels of quick profit.
If you’re introducing a sub platform like this you need to do what you can to expand it. They could’ve done a much better job of that at $399 while still making a tidy little profit per unit, in turn having a wider base buying more VR titles. Then further down the line (~3yrs) they could introduce a heavily-cost reduced unit for $299 in tandem with an EDGE/Pro premium SKU at $399 incorporating wireless, pancake lenses and a lower persistence OLED.
Sony/PS are high on their MTX revenue from a fickle audience, they’re completely mishandling everything else.
This device’s development would no doubt have been started in a culture of platform building and considering long term brand health. Now all Sony is left with is pure shareholder-pleasers who don’t balance long term brand health against short term gains; that old guard is largely gone. Now every component of the business will have metrics collected and if it doesn’t meet on basic criteria: “does it make us money, quick..?” it gets thrown aside. What they don’t consider is maintaining a cohesive, strong brand requires certain elements that don’t always result in upfront profits, they’re value-adds that put the brand in good standing with the customer and even the internal culture. There are areas where you take a hit or at least land neutro to strengthen the ship for the longer journey. But that’s where we are now, it’s all about money extraction and with that the enshittification has begun, eventually the gutting will happen when they need to squeeze more dollars out and then the fall from up high will begin as they simply don’t possess the means to provide the quality expected of them.
Or, they can course correct, they did it midway through PS3 and into PS4, showing a masterclass in realising where their bread is buttered and shutting down an entire industry of naysayers by playing to their strengths. The problem this time is they’re not feeling anything on the purse strings. They’re raking in 55% of their revenue from services and neglecting their core, they’re high on the mtx supply and can’t see through the dollar signs for what a precarious position they may be in longer term. They had to fight for their survival back then, now they can just coast and keep extracting cash until the tide shifts and the wheels suddenly fall off.
