Sony’s new PlayStation VR 2 virtual reality headset will be released on 22 February 2023, the company has announced. It will cost £529.99, more than the PlayStation 5 console needed to use it (currently £479.99).
The price includes the headset itself, two motion controllers and headphones. An optional charging station costs an extra £39.99. Sony is billing it as a more premium device than the previous PlayStation VR, which was released in 2016 at £349. It features haptic feedback in the controllers, eye-tracking, higher fidelity OLED screens and 3D audio. Games bought for the older device will not be compatible with the newer one.
There will be about 20 games available at launch or shortly after, many of which are also available on other VR platforms. The Sony-exclusive titles include tie-ins with PlayStation’s most popular games, including Horizon Call of the Mountain, which puts you behind the eyes of hero Aloy as she climbs rock faces and fights robotic creatures with a bow and arrow, and horror game Resident Evil Village. Pricing for the games has not been announced, but Horizon can be added to PSVR2 pre-orders for an extra £40.
At a time when most people’s budgets are being squeezed, the price of PlayStation VR 2 is likely to be an issue for many players. PSVR’s main consumer virtual reality competitor, Meta’s Quest 2 headset, costs £399 (and doesn’t require a console or PC to run). PSVR2 is, however, technically superior, and Sony’s stable of studios has been put to work creating the kind of high-end games that Sony hopes will tempt players into virtual reality.
VR technology has proven variably popular in the video game space. Since the first wave of Oculus, Vive and PlayStation headsets launched in 2016, there has not been a significant movement towards it. Sony’s first PSVR headset sold around 5m units, to a base of more than 100m PlayStation 4 owners.
