Did Sony Doom the PSVR?

[greenmedic88]

The overall market response to VR has been soft (this is not exclusive to PSVR), indicating the primary, if not only buyers have been early tech adopters.

The biggest hurdle as a consumer device is the prohibitive price. $400 plus the PS4 Camera and a pair of Move controllers pulls the price up to $550 for the full experience. But everyone knew this was the cost month ago, so this is no surprise although it puts PSVR on par with a decent 4K HDTV for the gamer who hasn't already converted to 4K, which incidentally, Sony is pushing as the reason to buy a PS4P.

Realistically, PSVR pairs better with the PS4Pro, so those who are really sold on the PSVR experience will want to do that upgrade first, and these customers are looking at closer to a $1,000 initial investment in the tech ($400 PS4P, $400 PSVR, camera, Move).

Existing PS4 owners could just drop $400 on the headset, play existing games and the new demos with the headset rather than on a new flat screen, but it would be interesting to see which percentage of current buyers fall into this category as opposed to the former. It would depend upon consumer priorities. Most would prefer a PS4P/4K HDTV set up, which I'm sure some enthusiastic VR pundits will argue, but I'm standing pretty firm on that assertion until I see data that indicates otherwise.

As someone who had a bit more than a casual interest in PSVR, I have not read about or heard of any current game or application that made me stand up and say "I will buy that today." I had no intention of buying any other VR system and have been fairly immune to the VR hype and simply see it as a potential natural progression of visual media. Or it may just become history's next Kinect, only a lot more expensive.

Personally, I will end up buying a PS4Pro before buying PSVR and I'm in no rush to do either due to a lack of current compelling reasons to do so.

The tech itself is not the killer app. That's like saying the PS3 was a killer app due to the much touted tech back when it was released, yet the market made a strong statement of "where are the games that take advantage of this hardware that justify the price" and withheld sales. Opinions vary, but I'm seeing a similar response to PSVR.

When the games are released that justify the current price, there will be conversion, but I see it as a more gradual process unless SCE releases an app that is such a game changing killer app that people will "get a second job" to pay for all the hardware required to play it.