Playstation VR: The Osborne effect kills Moss 2
Playstation VR is dead. Moss 2 sales figures show how bad the situation is.
Adorable, exciting, clever. These are the words MIXED colleague Ben used to describe Moss 2 a few weeks ago in his review. Moss 2 is a masterpiece that is a worthy continuation of the great first part and even surpasses it in many aspects, according to his Moss 2 review.
Ben is not alone in this opinion. Moss 2 received good to excellent reviews across the board. On Metacritic, the VR game has 84 points with 36 reviews. 35 reviews are positive.
Hesitant Moss fans
Despite widespread media coverage, it obviously wasn't enough to make Moss 2 a VR hit. On the contrary.
According to statistics from the website PSN Profiles, Moss 2 sold shockingly poorly. The website tracks PSN profiles of PS4 and PS5 gamers who use the service and indicates how many have purchased a certain game. Moss 2 has just over 120 owners in Europe and North America.
This number is not absolute, and sales will probably be significantly higher than this. But it gives a rough idea of a game's success. Moss 1 recorded more than 22,000 owners in both regions combined. Long-running titles like Beat Saber, Superhot VR, and Job Simulator come in at around 40,000 to 50,000.
PSVR 2 kills PSVR 1
The fact that Moss 2 has met with so little interest is not because of the game. Playstation VR is to blame.
The VR headset has more than five years under its belt and the fact that a successor is waiting in the wings should have more or less sealed the end of the platform. After all, who still buys hardware when it will soon be replaced by a newer and more powerful model? In business, this phenomenon is called the Osborne effect.
It also has an impact on game sales, especially since Moss fans might have to buy the game for the Playstation VR 2 a second time. It's clear that they'd rather wait in this case. The timing for the release of Moss 2 couldn't be more unfortunate.
We can only hope that the game sells better on the PSVR 2 and that things improve with sales on the Meta Quest 2 starting in the summer. It would be unfortunate to see one of the best VR game brands come to an end, especially since the publisher is planning more spin-offs.
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