While it’s understandable to be critical of everything (after all, critical thinking should be fundamental) when a piece of hardware hasn’t even been released, isn’t it too early to worry about it?

GamesRadar reported a statement in issue 380 of EDGE magazine from an analyst at research firm Omdia. According to Omdia (virtual and augmented reality – VR, AR) analyst George Jijiashvili, the PlayStation VR2’s success hinges on one crucial, and indeed legitimate, factor: internally developed (i.e., from PlayStation Studios), first-party exclusive games. (As exclusive as they can be, because Sony usually goes a year between PlayStation 5-to-PC releases, and maybe that’s the way PSVR2-to-PC VR titles are going.)

As Jijiashvili sees it, the three dozen or so confirmed PlayStation VR2 games (or ports, because there will be a few of those) make it worth paying $550/€600! (That’s more than you can buy a PlayStation 5 for!) There’s Gran Turismo 7 and Horizon: Call of the Mountain at launch, but there are also some good third-party titles (Resident Evil: Village, Rez Infinite, Tetris Effect Connected…), but in the longer term, the device should have strong in-house developed games.

The analyst says Sony should show its commitment to PlayStation VR2. He sees the PSVR2 failing to catch up with its predecessor’s first year (1.9 million sales in 2017) and predicts only around 1.6 million sales for the new virtual reality headset, which he says is in trouble if its only leading first-party development (that isn’t a port or a game mode) is Horizon: Call of the Mountain alone.

And he’s right. If no high-quality, internally developed PlayStation VR2 games exist, why spend a small fortune on a VR headset coming out on February 22? We just don’t want the PlayStation Vita story to repeat itself.

Source: PSL