With the costs associated with most virtual reality devices being exceptionally high, you might expect Sony Corp to sell its new PlayStation VR at a loss to draw consumers in, but according to Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida, the new device will not lose money, even though it is being sold at $399, $200 less than Oculus Rift.

“According to our hardware team, we are not going to lose money by selling the PS VR for the price we announced,” Yoshida said in a recent interview with Eurogamer. “That’s great news because we can invest in promoting or doing trials in developer support without bleeding money by selling the PS VR hardware, so we can focus on manufacturing as many and deliver to consumers to their demand.”

Getting consumers to adopt expensive new hardware can be tough, which is why many companies choose to sell at a loss, and this is especially true in the gaming industry. For example, both the original Xbox and the Xbox 360 were sold at a loss of roughly $125 for each unit sold.

Yoshida said that the credit for selling PlayStation VR at a relatively low price without losing money goes to PlayStation’s hardware development team.

“Luckily, our hardware teams have been making hardware for the longest time, and they are experts in the industry,” Yoshida said. “We approached PS VR development like we approach PlayStation development. We always aim high in terms of quality of experience. Especially because virtual reality is so new, we wanted to do it right the first time, so we waited until this time so that we can use cutting edge tech like a 120hz OLED display.”

He added, “We focused on creating and delivering the high quality VR experience first, and only after that we focused on how low price that we can deliver. Our target was almost the exactly same announced price of the PlayStation 4.”

Image courtesy of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc