Today marks the one-year anniversary of the PlayStation VR’s release, and Sony is celebrating with a sale and by doubling down on its marketing campaign. It’s also preparing to release a revised version of the PSVR hardware.
Last year, Sony was caught off guard with higher than expected demand for the PSVR headset. For several months, the hardware was hard to find on store shelves, which prompted the company to tone down its marketing campaign. After all, there’s no use in promoting a product that you can’t supply.
Despite the lax marketing campaign, Sony pushed 900,000 units to online and retail stores by February 2017, and over the summer the company reported that more than 1 million PS4 owners purchased PSVR headsets. Sales for Sony’s VR system appear to have lagged in recent months, but the company is ready to make a push for the holidays and it's kicking it off with an anniversary celebration.
Sony is attempting to draw attention to its rapidly growing catalog of VR titles. The current crop features more than 100 games and experiences, including gems like Job Simulator, Arizona Sunshine, and Superhot, and some of the best titles have been heavily discounted to celebrate the anniversary. Most people have had, but a taste of what Sony has to offer to PSVR owners and the current sale offers an opportunity to change that. Sony hasn’t discounted everything in the catalog, but you can find some great deals, such as 40% off Sparc and Resident Evil 7, and 50% off Driveclub VR.
More Content Coming
After one year, Sony has accrued a catalog of over 100 PSVR titles, but soon that list will be 50% bigger. Sony revealed that 50+ new VR titles would be available of PSVR by the end of this year.
Many of the upcoming games were already known to us, including Gran Turismo Sport, which arrives next week, and Bethesda’s Skyrim VR and Doom VR, which are coming in November and December, respectively. And we learned of Bravo Team, Moss, No Heroes Allowed, and The Inpatient during E3 this year, which are all on the docket for holiday gaming.
The list also includes a number of titles that are available on other platforms that we didn’t know were coming to Sony’s platform, such as Drunken Bar Fight, SculptrVR, Quar Infernal Machines, and VR Apocalypse. Sony also slipped in a handful of titles that we’ve never heard of and have no details about, such as The Rabbit Hole, and Honor & Duty. You can see the complete list of titles on Sony’s blog.
Hardware Revision Coming
Sony is putting a lot of focus into content releases for the tail end of the year, but the company is also preparing a small hardware launch. Last month, Sony revealed that it would be releasing a revised version of the PSVR system this holiday season, which includes an updated Processor Box that enables HDR passthrough for PS4 Pro systems. We didn’t know it at the time, but we’ve since learned that the revised PSVR package would also include revised Move controllers that have Micro USB instead of the archaic Mini USB ports for charging. And we're still convinced that Sony has another trick up it's sleave for the input control.
The upcoming releases of Skyrim VR and Doom VR present a locomotion dilemma because the current Move controllers don't have thumbsticks for directional input. A Move controller with a thumbstick would be of huge benefit to developers who wish to port their teleport-enabled VR games to Sony's platform. The PlayStation Aim controller gave a taste of that sort of mechanic on the PlayStation platform, but it sacrifices independent hand movement to do so. A Move controller with a thumbstick would give the PSVR better control parity with the Vive and Rift.
