PS VR2 is brilliant for PlayStation even if it doesn’t sell gangbusters

How well Sony’s PlayStation VR2 sells is a bit of a hot topic. For some people it seems to be absolutely essential that this new headset and controller package sells to a large percentage of the PS5 userbase, as if failure to become mainstream signifies that the whole thing is a failure. I don’t think that’s true at all.

If you are a person that makes buying choices based on careful consideration of all options, and not someone who buys on a whim or some kind of bizarre brand loyalty based on zero actual sense (we’ve all done it, to be fair), you’d probably look at a new console purchase similarly. What are the pros and cons of each? What, in the end, is the best option for you, long term?

You might well decide that the Switch, despite being less powerful (by a considerable amount), is fully portable, has arguably the best exclusive games, and offers a fairly reasonable subscription service that provides access to loads of classic games. That’s a decent sell.

Xbox can deliver the most powerful console or the cheapest of the current generation, it has a strong first-party line-up of games, and it too has a great subscription service – this time offering a lot of new games across all genres.

PlayStation 5 is almost as powerful as the Xbox Series X, it has excellent exclusive games, and has a strong subscription service that offers plenty of games across all genres, new and old.

Hmm, buying this new console isn’t going to be as easy as it seemed.

What about VR? That seems cool, right? Nintendo offered a kind of Fisher-Price go at it through Labo, but it’s essentially a toy. Xbox has no way to use VR on its consoles. And that leaves PS5 and its PS VR2. To put it quite clearly, if you are at all interested in high-end VR and don’t have a gaming PC, the PS5 is the only console that ticks that box.

We let extra functionality influence our buying decisions all the time. My coffee machine, for example, has a milk-frother built in. It was a thing I thought I’d use a lot, so I excluded coffee machines that didn’t have this function. I rarely use it. I bought a phone with 5G functionality, yet I don’t live in an area with 5G. Chances are I’ll have upgraded to a new phone before that service rolls out in my area.

You might buy a PlayStation 5 in the knowledge that one day you could, if you fancied it and finances allowed, pick up the VR2 unit and enter that exciting new world. Sales targets and my gut suggest that you won’t. A small percentage of you will, but most of you won’t. But at least you have the option.

I firmly believe that PlayStation VR2 is a superb bit of kit that is well-worth owning, but simply by existing it will be pushing people towards PlayStation in a way Xbox and Nintendo simply can’t compete with.