It’s been a rough first year for the PlayStation VR 2. After being hyped up as a game-changer, the headset launched in early 2023 with a price tag to match the console itself, only for Sony to drastically cut back on its plans to develop new virtual reality games. But if PSVR2 is ever going to get a chance to shine, it may be now. Starting in early August, the headset will become compatible with PC (in addition to PS5), and in the lead-up to the PC launch, PSVR2 is available at its lowest price ever for a limited time.
You can currently pick up the PSVR2 for a massive $200 discount, bringing its price to a far more reasonable $349. The deal is available from Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and PlayStation from now until August 5 and includes two PSVR2 Sense controllers, which you’ll need for hand-tracking. If you plan to pick up the Horizon Forbidden West virtual reality spinoff, Horizon Call of the Mountain, you can also save an additional $10 by picking up a $399 bundle including the headset and the game, which normally costs $60 on its own. Horizon Call of the Mountain may well be the best PSVR2 exclusive, and if you’re already buying the headset, shelling out an extra $50 for maybe the best introduction you can get to VR is worth it.
The only problem is that we don’t really expect to see too many more great PSVR2 exclusives coming any time soon. Sony reportedly slashed funding for VR games recently, leaving only two first-party PSVR2 games in development. While that report from Android Central comes from an anonymous source, it does seem to line up with a lack of output for Sony’s VR headset. The company even shuttered one of its premier VR developers, London Studio, while laying off workers at Firesprite, the co-developer of Horizon Call of the Mountain.
Even the deal itself could be seen as a sign of desperation from Sony. The company reportedly overestimated PSVR2’s popularity, producing way more units than there was demand for. Because of that, it reportedly stopped production of more headsets until the old stock was sold through.
So why should you bother picking up a PSVR2 at this point? Well, it’s certainly not a good idea for everyone, but right now there are a couple of compelling new reasons. For one, its $200 discount makes it fairly inexpensive for a VR headset compared to the $500 Meta Quest 3 (assuming you already own a PS5).
The price cut also comes at the best possible time for Sony. Starting August 7, the PSVR 2 will be compatible with PC, opening up a whole world of VR games for the headset. Until now, you could only buy PSVR 2 games from the PlayStation Store, which is more limited than the marketplace for Meta Quest games. A PS5 was also required to play, meaning you had to shell out around $1,000 just to get your foot in the door. Some of PSVR 2’s most advertised features, like haptic feedback, won’t be available on PC and you have to buy an expensive $60 PC adapter for it to work at all, but that still makes the PSVR 2 one of the cheapest options for VR on PC.
There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the long-term prospects of the PSVR 2, but you don’t need to be a true believer to take advantage of the Summer Sale deal. Despite its limitations, it’s still a solid VR headset, and it’s soon to be one of the cheaper PC options along with the only choice to play VR games on PS5. If you’ve been on the fence about buying one, you’ll likely never see a better deal than the one running right now.
