Report: Sony overestimated PSVR2 demand, halts production on headset

Sony has temporarily paused production on the PlayStation VR2 gaming headset due to oversupply, sources tell Bloomberg's Takashi Mochizuki.

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Reports indicate that Sony's new PSVR2 headset isn't selling as fast as the company had hoped. The virtual reality headset released in February 2023 to strong sales, and sales of the second-gen HMD even managed to significantly outpace its predecessor at launch. That momentum apparently has been short-lived, and unsold units are starting to stack up in Sony's warehouses.

Sources tell Bloomberg that Sony produced 2 million PSVR2 headsets, but exact sell-through to customers remains unknown. Analyst firm IDC estimates that the PSVR2 has shipped around 1.699 million units worldwide. Some hurdles that Sony faces to speed up PSVR2 adoption is the headset's higher $549 price tag, as well as the requirement of extra hardware like a PlayStation 5 console to power the device.

While Sony has yet to comment on the report, the firm's financials give some clues on its hardware situation.

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Hardware/accessory shipments have an inverse relationship with Sony's inventory of physical products. Sony reports its inventory values as the total worth of the video game products that it has on-hand in warehouses and supply chains.

When Sony ships millions of gaming consoles and accessories like the PlayStation VR2, then the value of on-hand inventory is reduced. Sony sent off parts of its inventory so that hardware is no longer on the shelves.

This is basically the total sum of PlayStation hardware that Sony has yet to ship or sell to consumers/stores, and the value includes PlayStation consoles, accessories like the DualSense Edge and headphones, the PlayStation VR headset, as well as InZone branded devices.

According to Sony's latest financial report, the company has $4.34 billion worth of Game & Network Services inventory, a reduction of $2.35 billion from last quarter. Looking at the graph provided by us based on Sony's historical inventory values, we see the reduction in inventory was accompanied by a significant jump in PlayStation 5 console shipments.

Sony recently made the drastic decision to break console exclusivity with the PSVR2 and work on making the headset compatible with PC configurations.