The way Sony has chosen to release any information about the PlayStation VR2 headset has been very strange. It was officially announced in January of this year, and there hasn't been much news or major VR headset reveals since then, and it's also strange that the major announcements (of which there have been few) that have come out have mostly come in the form of news on the PlayStation Blog.

Cold marketing, unfavorable feedback

Unfortunately, all of the reveals have been lackluster, with no captivating trailers, no showcase events... everything about the headset announcements has been completely subdued. Something huge was revealed for the PSVR2 headset, in a not-so-festive way, when Sony announced the PS VR2 release date and price with an update on the PlayStation Blog.

Unfortunately, these headsets weren't taken seriously enough in terms of how they were revealed. When the PSVR2 launches on February 22, 2023, these headsets will cost around $549.99. There was a backlash against the announcement from a wide range of social media users, and it's not hard to see why. And frankly, it's hard to see why Sony thinks this is a good price. Because it really does impose a logic that I believe... has things going wrong from the start.

In fact, the deeper you look into the price, the weirder it gets. $ 549.99 is a pretty steep price for a PSVR2, but it's also worth remembering that this is an accessory, meaning you can only use it if you have a PS5, which is cheaper than the VR headset.

It's just a sub, Sony!

Of course, the PS5 itself is not cheap, the digital version costs $ 400 and the regular version costs $ 500 anyway, it is already a pretty big amount that you had to shell out before even buying the PlayStation VR2. Once you buy it, you will notice that you have spent at least 950 dollars.. that is, more than a thousand dollars, and you still haven't spent any money on games.

Virtual reality is such a big subset of the industry that the most successful VR headsets on the market are still far from selling a whopping 20 million units. So it’s hard to see why Sony would consider it wise to launch more than one spin-off at such an exorbitant price tag, and in the midst of the global recession we’re currently facing.

The price is like the VR market is short on products, so it's not like people interested in VR have no choice but to buy a PS VR2 (despite how amazing the PSVR2 is). You have something like the Quest 2... a solid, respectable device with a solid library of games that you can get for $1,400, which isn't cheap either, but you don't need an expensive home console to be able to use the headset.

A game library that won't tip the scales

With the launch of any new device, the ultimate question is always: does its library of games justify its price tag, no matter what? The answer so far is no. Out of all the games that have been officially announced so far, there aren't many games that seem worth buying the specs for. Horizon: Call of the Mountain looked promising, but there isn't a throng of gamers eager to get their hands on the game at any cost.

Given the insanely high price tag of the headset and the easy availability of competing headsets, it seems almost impossible that the PlayStation VR2 will be able to come close to achieving the success that Sony is hoping for. Reports claim that Sony is aiming to sell over 2 million copies in the first quarter of 2023, but it seems unlikely that we'll see those sales.

Given the circumstances of its launch at the moment, the PSVR2 seems doomed to the fate of the PS Vita… a promising piece of technology has been thwarted by baffling financial decisions.