PlayStation VR Priced, Well Kind Of

Less than a week ago Sony’s VR headset was known as Project Morpheus, but now that it’s moving closer to its 2016 launch they decided it needs a proper name, so at TGS they renamed it PlayStation VR. According to Sony CEO, Andrew House, in an interview at TGS PlayStation VR will be priced as a “new gaming platform.” That means it won’t be cheap, we could be looking at an investment of around €200-€250 but that’s just my guess and it could be even higher. A high price could create some real problems for PlayStation VR.

Let’s take Kinect as an example of how PlayStation VR could struggle. When Microsoft took the Kinect out of the Xbox One’s box they made a conscious decision to kill it. By removing Kinect they split the Xbox One’s audience into those with it and those without it which means third-party developers are less likely to make games for it. From a third-party developers perspective they can develop exclusively for the Kinect audience, or they can develop for the Xbox One’s standard controller. The second option gives them a wider audience on the Xbox One alone but it also gives them the option to port to other consoles and PC due to the game not being specifically designed for Kinect. In summary Kinect had the advantage of reaching all Xbox One gamers when included in the box but lost it when removed from the box, which in turn killed it due to lack of third-party interest.

PlayStation VR, then, is already fighting an uphill struggle due to over 26million PS4s already being out there and before it even releases that number will rise. The hill only gets steeper, putting Sony at a bigger disadvantage, now that we know PSVR will be priced as a new platform. Even if it is included with a console when it launches in 2016 you’d have to imagine the price of that bundle would be pretty high. One thing in their favour, that Andrew House did mention, is that PSVR will be supported with at least 10 games throughout 2016, let’s hope at least half of them are built from the ground up for VR.