Sony Will Not Release PSVR Sales Numbers, Yet
PlayStation VR probably needs “a lot of improvement” in the future Sony CEO Kaz Hirai said following Sony’s CES keynote. The PSVR launched last October to glowing reviews from consumers and critics alike. But it hasn’t been all roses for the device. Messy cabling, games amounting to nothing more than a tech demo and many calling it a gimmicky device has plagued the PSVR since launch. When asked about some of these issues Kaz acknowledged its shortcomings and said: “I would say that generally speaking there’s probably a lot of improvement where it makes sense.”
Kaz did say that the PSVR hardware is a “first version” reminding everyone that “PlayStation is a business that is known to iterate and to evolve hardware products.” Those worried that new models of PSVR could see costs increase as new features are added need not worry because Kaz confidently said that although PlayStation could improve the product in future, costs will not be going up. He said:
“[Improvements] have to be balanced with cost considerations as well, because it is a consumer product for gamers so we don’t want to say it’s lighter, whiter or whatever, but it’s going to cost triple. That’s not going to happen.”
Earlier in the week and speaking at the Sony CES keynote, Hirai had stressed that PlayStation VR had had a “great start” which continued through the holiday season. Despite this, sales figures have been hard to come by. Kaz explained there was a specific reason why Sony was holding back sales numbers for the time being. He said:
“We’ve always said we didn’t want to make a huge splash with VR in the beginning because it is something that requires first of all consumers to go into the stores and experience for themselves or at a friends house. This is not something you can make a sale based on articles you see in papers, magazines or on websites.We wanted to make sure we weren’t going to upload or frontload a lot of inventory at retail, because then you’re going to get this reaction from retail saying well it’s not selling through. We’ve always said it’s going to be a slow start, unfortunately, we did produce a lot of units but we ran out of stock in some retailers, but I think based on reports coming out of the holiday season, we’re actually happy with the numbers. One of the reasons we’re not talking about the numbers so much is because we don’t want the numbers to take a life of their own.”