A report on Bloomberg states that PlayStation and Sony Interactive Entertainment will produce 2 million PlayStation VR 2 headsets by early 2023.

The company said the manufacturer plans to have that many ready by March 2023, expecting it to sell faster than its predecessor. The original PSVR sold 1 million units within 7 months.

The PSVR 2 will be out in early 2023, and will have more than 20 games ready for the device.

Sounds Great, But…

One of the reasons why this claim may bite Sony in the bum is due to PSVR 2 owners not being able to play existing PlayStation VR games. The company revealed that the new headset will not be backwards compatible. Here’s the reasoning according to SVP of platform experience Hideaki Nishino:

“PSVR games are not compatible with PSVR 2 because PSVR 2 is designed to deliver a truly next-generation VR experience. PSVR 2 has much more advanced features like all new controllers with haptic feedback and adaptive triggers and inside-out tracking, eye tracking in the headset, 3D audio all coming together of course. So this means developing PSVR 2 requires a whole different approach from the original PSVR.”

One can argue that the tech in PSVR2 might be too much for older games to handle compatible-wise, with the new VR tech and all. However, the more educated folks and developers out there can just refer to existing VR sets like the Oculus and Valve’s Index getting new versions made and still having old games compatible with them. The original PSVR didn’t exactly make everyone buy VR headsets en masse since the price is pretty high, so what makes Sony thinks version 2 will be any different if everyone’s just going to be ambivalent about it?