Three of the games in that left column carry the same release date on Sony’s own store. February 22, 2023. That is the day PlayStation VR2 went on sale, so three and a half years on, a third of the storefront’s own list of what people actually paid for in August is software that was already there on day one.
I have been in VR since 2016, and this is usually the point where somebody writes the obituary. I am not going to. The chart is stranger than that, and better, and it takes about four minutes with the store pages to see why.
The list, in the order Sony printed it
US/Canada, one through ten: Synapse, I Am Cat, Bootstrap Island, Beat Saber, Job Simulator, Among Us 3D: VR, Pavlov, Arizona Sunshine VR 2, and then Moss VR twice, in the ninth slot and again in the tenth. Ten rows, nine distinct games.
The EU column runs mostly the same cast in a different order and swaps the tail: I Am Cat, Beat Saber, Bootstrap Island, Job Simulator, Pavlov, Among Us 3D: VR, Synapse, Arizona Sunshine VR 2, Grand Rush VR Highway Car Traffic Racing Simulator, and Swordsman VR. The only footnote Sony hangs on the table is about method, and it matters: “PlayStation Store purchases only. Game upgrades or games bundled with hardware not included”. These are purchases. Not catalogue downloads, not Plus, not bundles. People spending money.
Now the dates, every one of them read off the same store the chart is measuring. Job Simulator, February 22, 2023. Pavlov, February 22, 2023. Moss VR, February 22, 2023. Swordsman VR, February 22, 2023. Four launch day titles between them, three landing in each regional ten depending which side of the Atlantic you read.
The rest: Beat Saber’s PlayStation listing says May 24, 2023. Synapse, the US number one, is July 4, 2023. Among Us 3D: VR is December 4, 2023 and Arizona Sunshine VR 2 is December 5, 2023. Grand Rush VR is September 27, 2024. I Am Cat is May 6, 2026, and Bootstrap Island is August 13, 2026.
Which leaves two games on either chart released this year, and nothing at all from 2025. Go back and read that again. A full calendar year of PS VR2 releases produced nothing that outsold a launch day mouse platformer in August 2026.
The good news is a game three weeks old
Bootstrap Island reached PS VR2 on August 13. It finished third in both regions.
That is nineteen days of a thirty one day month, measured against a full month for everything above and below it, and it still finished ahead of Beat Saber in the US column. Maru VR had already shipped the game on Steam back on March 12, so the PS VR2 build is a port rather than a debut. The port is what the chart is counting, and the port is three weeks old. It is a Robinson Crusoe inspired survival roguelike set in the 17th century, and you play Daniel, a merchant cast ashore on a tropical island with nothing, which the studio’s own store copy is admirably blunt about: you survive without guidance or you do not survive.
