Quest Massively Outsold PSVR 2 Over the 2023 Holiday

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Judging by sales volume on Amazon, Quest 2 & Quest 3 massively outsold PSVR 2 during the 2023 holiday season.

Tracking Quest 2, Quest 3, and PSVR 2 sales volume on Amazon US gives strong evidence that Quest headsets did quite well this holiday season, while PSVR 2 saw concerningly low sales. Looking at the numbers over the course of the holiday season shows that for every 1 unit of PSVR 2 sold, Quest sold more than 30 units.

The data compares all capacity variants of Quest 2 & Quest 3 against the standard PSVR 2 retail box and the PSVR 2 + Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle. The original PSVR would be counted but it has been discontinued. No refurbished units were counted.

We can also compare the trend over time by looking at PSVR 2 sales figures as a baseline compared to Quest 2 & Quest 3 sales.

Based on the data we’ve collected we can see that Quest had a pretty good holiday season with Meta selling at least 320,000 headsets on Amazon US alone between November 16th and January 16th. On the other hand, PSVR 2 sold only around 10,500 on Amazon US during that time.

That’s a concerningly low figure for PSVR 2, especially considering that the holiday season tends to be the best selling period for VR headsets. Even if Sony managed to sell PSVR 2 units at the same rate as this holiday for the entire year, it still wouldn’t even be 1/3 of the Quest units sold on Amazon US during this holiday period alone.

Amazon US is of course not the only place these headsets are being sold. However, our analysis of sales data on every regional Amazon market where PSVR 2 is sold shows that Amazon US moves the most volume for both Quest headsets and PSVR 2. Sony also sells PSVR 2 through other retailers and has a strong direct sales channel through PlayStation.com. And while it’s possible that one of those other channels is a significant contributor to PSVR 2 sales, the Amazon US comparison no doubt gives us a look at what’s going on more broadly

PSVR 2 sold strongly out of the gate when it launched in early 2023. In fact it actually outpaced the sales rate of its predecessor in the initial weeks. But since launch Sony hasn’t seemed particularly focused on the headset. Despite being well received from a hardware perspective, PSVR 2’s content library offers only a few compelling exclusive games compared to the less expensive Quest, while also lacking many of the most popular VR games. To date PSVR 2 has roughly 160 games available.

Combined with a lack of backwards-compatibility with the original PSVR library, this has meant only a trickle of interesting content to pull users back to PSVR 2. And as far as future content goes, Sony hasn’t announced the development of any new first-party VR games for players to look forward to. We certainly hope that will change later this year.

Overall it’s a concerning trend. Sony had built a competitive library of content on the original PSVR, including some first-party exclusives that were counted among VR’s best games. That foundation gave the headset a significantly longer lifespan than its hardware specs suggested. This time around Sony’s headset has some unique hardware advantages but seems to be struggling on the content side.