The news around PlayStation VR 2 is not very good. While it is rumored that sales of Sony’s virtual reality headset are far from satisfactory, it seems that its end of life has already been decided internally. We owe this information to the site Android Central and its journalist Nicholas Sutrich who claims to have been contacted by a reliable source, explaining to him that Sony is in the process of drastically reducing its funding for the PSVR 2. Worse, only two games released Sony productions are reportedly in development internally, which is a warning sign of abandonment of the material. Android Central still goes further in its analysis, relying on official data from the Japanese manufacturer, in particular its strategy which is no longer geared towards virtual reality. To this, we must add that Sony has closed two of its studios specializing in virtual reality, First Contact and London Studio.
Further proof that Sony seems to have lost interest in VR, the Astro Bot game which was unveiled during a State of Play and presented hands-on to the press during the Summer Games Fest is not even compatible with the PSVR 2 headset, while the game Astro Bot: Rescue Mission remains one of Sony’s best VR games. Nicolas Doucet, the game’s game director, said that a VR version of the next Astro Bot on PS5 “was not an option considered” before adding that a port of the game is “very unlikely”.
Worse still, we learned last May that the next Batman Arkham Shadow will not be released on PSVR 2, since it will be a Meta exclusive. A missed opportunity when we know that the first PlayStation VR had offered us a very cool Batman Arkham VR. Of course, for the moment, Sony has obviously not commented on these rumors, but there are still many clues that lead us to believe that the less than 2 million copies of the PSVR 2 would clearly be insufficient to invest more. Sony will give its product one last chance, since a PC adapter will arrive next August, and will allow SteamVR games to be compatible with the Sony headset. Will this be enough to revive the hype around the beast? Nothing is less certain…