PSVR 2 has a 'good chance' to beat PSVR 1, says Sony
The Playstation VR 2 has been on the market for two weeks. Sony's CFO believes the device has a good chance of surpassing the PSVR 1 in terms of sales.
"We are very excited to launch VR2 for PS5," Hiroki Totoki said on Monday at the Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco. “VR 1, we sold over five million units, and I think we have a good chance to exceed that amount with PlayStation VR 2.”
Hiroki Totoki is currently the company's CFO and will be promoted to President and COO effective April 1, 2023. He will continue to serve as the company's CFO.
Totoki was previously asked to assess the launch of Playstation VR 2 and comment on the company's expectations for the hardware, as reported by Video Games Chronicle.
Sony reportedly reduced sales forecast
The first Playstation VR was launched in the fall of 2016, and by the end of 2019, more than five million units had been sold in just over three years.
Sony will know how many pre-orders have been placed and how many units have been sold in the first two weeks, and will be able to compare those figures to those of the first Playstation VR. Totoki is cautiously optimistic in his statement.
Ahead of the launch, Bloomberg reported that Sony had cut its sales forecast in half due to disappointing pre-orders: from two to one million units sold in the first quarter of 2023. Without directly contradicting Bloomberg's report, Sony later stated that production numbers weren't cut.
For comparison: About 915,000 Playstation VR units were sold in the first five months between mid-October 2016 and mid-February 2017.
Next holiday season will be critical for Sony
The launch of Playstation VR 2 may be less crucial to its success than the upcoming holiday season.
Until then, the company has time to improve the system's software and announce more major VR games. A price cut could also help boost sales. However, it won't be easy for Sony, as Meta will also be competing at the same time with Meta Quest 3.
In general, Totoki seems optimistic about the VR market. He went on to reference forecasts that the overall VR market could be one of the largest growth areas in the media and entertainment segment during the first half of this decade, VGC reports.
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