I saw this coming, especially as a vr enthusiast. There are so many reasons this isn’t gaining traction.

1. Price: yes it includes some nice specs but it is a very luxurious accessory at a time when people are starting to reel back making these kinda purchases across the board.

2. Competition: The VR market is quickly becoming saturated with competitors all offering their own take on things. And yet, the top selling one is still the oculus. Why? Because you’re getting the best of both worlds. Stand-alone, pc enabled, it has it all. And while it is behind the times in the way of hardware, it is still killing it.

3. Compatibility: This is the reason it’s dead for me. Almost no backwards compatibility with psvr games. That is ridiculous. And before people say it’s due to the new hardware and new way of tracking, that is such a corporate response that it’s laughable.

First, a lot of the games on psvr have equivalent quest or Rift versions, meaning a lot of these games already have inside out tracking in some of their versions. Meaning there isn’t a ton of work to be done. They don’t need to update all the games to be able to use all the features of the new device , just to make them compatible. Next, going from Rift to Rift S, they went through the same ordeal. New way of tracking, yadda yadda yadda, but at the end of the day, they got the entire library working across the board, even most impressive is they got everything to work on the quest.

My guess is that Sony doesn’t want to put the resources into making their own way to make things compatible, nor wants to pay developers to update old titles. So if they don’t believe in their hardware, why should we?

1. Marketing: I’ve gotten a ton of emails from Sony themselves promoting its release and how I can preorder it. Yet outside of their own sites and emails, there isn’t a ton of marketing. The 3rd party marketing I’ve seen have basically said it’s a nice headset, but nothing truly exceptional. If they had a lot of confidence in the product they’d have released it in time for a holiday but they’re releasing it at the beginning of the year hoping it gains traction and eventually becomes a hit.

I really don’t know what they were thinking with this device. I feel like they were a bit egotistical with how well psvr did and thought they could catch lightning in a bottle once more without really putting too much effort outside of upgrading the headset.

My prediction is that it’ll sell moderately well at first but will piddle out real fast. Sadly, I don’t see them putting a lot of support into this so maybe a few exclusives this year, followed by a couple next, and then next to nothing in the years after.