Paying Up
Still among the most popular VR headsets the Sony (SNE) Playstation VR headset is now 6.27 years old, having been released in October of 2016, but with the official release of the Playstation VR2 scheduled for February 22 Sony is offering the headset to Chinese customers starting yesterday, but there are some conditions. Aside from the fact that the price in China will be the equivalent of $67 higher than in the US, you have to ‘register your interest’, which puts you in the queue to be ‘invited’ to pre-order the device, and not everyone will be invited. While the ‘invitation’ is also a prerequisite in the other countries where the pre-order is being offered (US, UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg), in China you will be limited to one device and you will have to come back to the store to pick it up, as there will be no shipping of the new device to pre-order customers. Hopefully you will enjoy your VR2 as the pre-orders are not applicable to the typical 7 day return policy, so if you don’t like it, you still own it.
The new device, for which stocks are estimated to be ~2m units, is certainly an upgrade to the older device, with two 2,000 x 2,040 resolution OLED displays vs. the previous model’s single 960 x 1080 display, and an improved field of view (110° vs. 96°), and an overall lighter headset that looks slightly less nerdy, along with three additional tracking cameras. At $600 plus charger and other necessary accessories, the new model is ~$200 more expensive than the older version, but we expect gamers will welcome the upgrades despite the higher cost, and with the Oculus 2 now over two years old and the profitability pressure on Meta (FB), we expect the next ‘Oculus’ to also see a bit of a price hike. While the global economy is weak and CE products are seeing mediocre demand, we expect the PD VR2 to sell out relatively quickly despite the higher price. .
The new device, for which stocks are estimated to be ~2m units, is certainly an upgrade to the older device, with two 2,000 x 2,040 resolution OLED displays vs. the previous model’s single 960 x 1080 display, and an improved field of view (110° vs. 96°), and an overall lighter headset that looks slightly less nerdy, along with three additional tracking cameras. At $600 plus charger and other necessary accessories, the new model is ~$200 more expensive than the older version, but we expect gamers will welcome the upgrades despite the higher cost, and with the Oculus 2 now over two years old and the profitability pressure on Meta (FB), we expect the next ‘Oculus’ to also see a bit of a price hike. While the global economy is weak and CE products are seeing mediocre demand, we expect the PD VR2 to sell out relatively quickly despite the higher price. .
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