Here’s how much real-world money it’ll cost you to play in Sony’s virtual video game domain.
After months of speculation, Sony has finally announced pricing for its highly anticipated PlayStation VR. While the virtual reality add-on won’t quite meet the company’s previously promised launch window of the first half of 2016, the finished product’s price will be in line with the fairly hefty amount we’d been expecting.
At the currently ongoing Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Sony let gamers in the industry’s major territories know how much they’ll have to pay to play with one of the biggest pushes ever made for home VR entertainment. Scheduled for an October release, PlayStation VR will be priced at 399 dollars in the U.S., 549 dollars in Canada, 399 Euros in the E.U., 349 pounds in the U.K., and 44,980 yen in Sony’s native Japan.
Prior to the announcement, Sony had publicly estimated PlayStation VR would set buyers back about as much as a console, and the official numbers work out to about $50 more than American consumers currently pay for PS4 bundles, and also roughly 6,000 yen more than the system sells for in Japan.
The annals of gaming history aren’t exactly filled with successful peripherals that are as expensive (or more) than the consoles needed to use them. NEC’s CD-ROM add-on for the PC Engine was a rare exception, but while it was a runaway hit in Japan, it died a slow but sure death in North America, where it cost nearly double what its base hardware (locally renamed the TurboGrafx-16) did. However, in the 25-plus years since then the industry has grown and matured considerably, with a video game console now being the central hub of entertainment media in many households. Add in the fact that, its own price tag notwithstanding, PlayStation VR requires no additional upgrades to the PlayStation 4 hardware (though you’ll need a PlayStation Camera) before users can start playing games, and we have a hunch there’ll be plenty of eager gamers ready to take the plunge this autumn.
Follow Casey on Twitter if the PC Engine still has a special place in your heart too.
Source: PlayStation official website (1, 2), PlayStation Blog
Image: PlayStation official website