It looks like Sony has a new VR headset on the way but, no, it isn’t PSVR 2.
Xperia Blog caught what appears to be leaked images of a new headset from Sony’s mobile division, Xperia. Yes, that’s right, this is a phone-based VR headset in 2021. According to the rumor, this new device will connect with Sony’s own Xperia 1 II and Xperia 1 III flagship models.
Images of the device show a plastic shell with a space in the front visor for the phone’s camera. There also appears to be a lens adjustment dial on the bottom. There’s no word yet on exactly what type of content you could expect on the device aside from one promotional image (below) that mentions 8K 360 degree HDR content. We don’t if it would offer advanced features like six degrees of freedom (6DOF) tracking, but that seems unlikely.
Phone-based VR headsets have mostly died out in the past year as the industry has shifted to fully standalone devices like the Oculus Quest. That said the Xperia 1 III is a powerhouse handset with a 4K HDR OLED display and 120Hz refresh rate, so it could offer a pretty striking visual experience.
Plus we’re also seeing some interesting new takes on the concept – the HTC Vive Flow connects to a user’s phone wirelessly as a means of control and media viewing, for example.
So, no, it’s not exactly the new Sony VR headset we’ve all been asking for. But more details on the previously-confirmed PS5 VR headset are expected in the new year. You can keep up with everything we know about that headset, which hasn’t officially been called PSVR 2, right here.
It’s PlayStation VR’s 5th birthday, so I’m going to do what we should all try to do on birthdays: say something really nice about it. Something that, as a life-long PlayStation user, I don’t say lightly.
PSVR was the best peripheral Sony’s gaming division has ever made. There, I said it.
Sony’s history with console peripherals and spin-offs has been, let’s face it, a little rocky. For every time PlayStation captured a certain market with a specific concept, there were two or three other attempts that didn’t quite take off. The PS2-era SingStar mics and Buzz controllers found a home in Europe, but the PS3’s Move controllers struggled to truly differentiate themselves in the face of the technically simplified — and much cheaper — Nintendo Wii.
This is true even of its side-projects like the PS Vita. That handheld was, for all intents and purposes, a little miracle of a device, but a lack of software support and the increasing shift towards mobile games really hurt its chances. The general trepidation around launching a VR headset on PS4 was certainly understandable, then.
Five years on, I’d argue PSVR was not only the rare PlayStation peripheral success story (or at least relative success story), but the best side-venture Sony has pursued in PlayStation’s 25+ year history.
That verdict was far from assured. PSVR faced an uphill battle as a $399 add-on for an already expensive console that also required a complicated sprawl of wires for an experience that — at the time — precious few people could attest to. Not to mention that the headset used the already-aged Move controllers and a tracking system that couldn’t keep up with you if turned your back away from a camera. Overall it seemed like a much bigger risk than motion controllers or karaoke microphones.
But PSVR, and VR in general, proved too interesting a prospect for many developers to ignore. The headset had a surprisingly strong launch lineup that let you become Batman, drive a tank, race cars and pilot a spaceship. None of this content resembled the top-end of PlayStation’s usual output, like the impeccably produced Uncharted series or the God of War reboot, but it was a diverse portfolio that really scratched at something not often seen in the gaming market, something genuinely new. Even if a lot of the content coming to PSVR was on the scrappy side, you had to respect the sheer amount of innovation in the scene.
And that’s true of the wider library five years on. There are perhaps only a handful of truly incredible, fully native PSVR games. Astro Bot’s breadth of charming ideas certainly comes to mind, as do the genuinely unique experiences offered in The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners and Superhot VR. But the platform is in no short supply of good, even great attempts to bring beloved genres, franchises and even entirely different gaming experiences to VR. Iron Man VR’s archnemesis might’ve been limited computing power, but it delivered on its core goal of thrilling superhero combat. Hitman 3 didn’t fully implement motion controls, but sneaking through corridors by physically leaning provided a fresh angle on Agent 47’s adventures. Even if this wasn’t the definitive way to play the game, it was a truly different experience that didn’t feel shoehorned in.
These were games that had developers tapping at the glass ceiling if never smashing right the way through it. But, given just how unwieldy VR development remains even five years on, that’s kind of enough.
But PSVR’s successes can’t be attributed to Sony on its own. Yes, the platform holder was no doubt instrumental to securing giant exclusives like Resident Evil 7 and, more recently, Hitman 3, but a lot of PSVR’s best games have come from developers’ desire to create something previously unseen. In Stockholm, former DICE and King developers gathered for a fresh start with studios like Fast Travel Games. In Seattle, people that once worked on Halo took a chance on Moss and in the process unearthed a unique layer of player/protagonist relationships we hadn’t really seen before.
Artists that hadn’t really made games before like Innerspace created A Fisherman’s Tale, which provided possibly the most mind-bending puzzle experience of the past few years. Even the sci-fi blockbuster action of the PlayStation-published Farpoint was born out of a former Sony developer’s experiments with a gun-shaped controller.
It’s that hunger to break the mold that really sustained PSVR during a time in which bigger publishers were hesitant to commit to the wider medium. And these titles have led the headset to a respectable milestone: 5 million units sold as of January 2020. Now, compared to the many millions of units the PS4 itself has shifted, that’s nothing. But stacked up against the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift headsets it released alongside it’s thought to be the clear winner (the lifetime sales of those two devices was never fully revealed). It’s a modest landmark to say the least but it served as a rare beacon of encouragement until VR headsets could become cheaper, more accessible and ultimately much more viable products.
As the headset has aged, it’s faced tougher challenges. PC VR headsets got better and cheaper, with tracking systems that practically fossilized Sony’s solution, and the sublime simplicity of the Oculus Quest has made it increasingly tougher to stand its ground as we wait for PS5 VR. And yet, somehow, the platform has still had notable releases even in 2021 with Hitman 3, Song in the Smoke and Fracked.
But it is time, though, to look beyond. PSVR has had a great run, better than many had expected it to, in fact. I can’t wait to see Sony bring this level of commitment to a new device on a machine far more capable of delivering complex, visually-rich VR titles and (hopefully) with much better tracking. It’s the story I’m most looking forward to covering in 2022.
But PSVR made plenty of magic with the tools it was given. At a time when VR’s future was far from certain, it proved to be the little headset that could. And I’ll remember every moment of eye-opening immersion, every struggle to get a Move controller to properly calibrate, every terrible VR movie tie-in and every unbridled scream of jump scare terror with immense fondness.
Gran Turismo 7 developer Polyphony Digital is tight-lipped about potential PS5 VR and PSVR support… for now.
In an interview with Eurogamer, series creator Kazunori Yamauchi was asked about PSVR support for the upcoming racing sim. He simply replied: “So regarding PSVR, we’re not at a state where we cannot talk about it yet.”
Well, that’s not a no at least.
Will Gran Turismo 7 Support PSVR 2?
The question of Gran Turismo 7 and PSVR support is an interesting one. PS4 exclusive Gran Turismo Sport did feature support for Sony’s first VR headset but only in very limited time trial and one-on-one AI race modes. We thought the support itself was fantastic, but the lack of options — likely due to the extra processing demands VR puts on the console — really hurt its longevity.
In fact, in 2019 Yamauchi himself said that one of the biggest improvements he expected to see in the next generation of consoles was with VR support. “The first thing that’s going to be affected by more power is VR,” he said. “I don’t think that there’s anything else that requires that much processing power. I really like VR; I’m one to believe in the possibilities of it, and it’s very suited for a driving game.”
Those comments, combined with Yamauchi’s answer above, give us hope that Gran Turismo 7 could end up supporting the upcoming PS5 VR headset. The device isn’t launching this year, though we are expecting it to arrive sometime in 2022. You can read up on everything we know so far right here.
GT7 itself launches on March 4 on PS5 and PS4, and it will be interesting to see if the latter version has any support to speak of this time around.
Sony Interactive Entertainment today announced it is acquiring Firesprite, the developer of VR horror hit, The Persistence.
The acquisition was announced over on the PlayStation Blog, though no financial details of the deal were disclosed. Firesprite itself is based in Liverpool, UK and features members of WipeOut developer Sony Liverpool, which closed its doors in 2012. Alongside The Persistence, which launched as a timed exclusive for PSVR, the team worked on The Playroom VR too.
Sony Buys Persistence Dev
Neither Sony nor Firesprite confirmed what their next project will be, nor made any mention of working in VR specifically. That said, in February of this year we reported that Firesprite was hiring for a VR game based on one of the “successful multimillion selling console IP titles in the last 10 years.” The game will be a “whole new chapter” in a “highly original universe” and utilize “the full immersive capabilities in VR”.
Job listings for that game, described as an action-adventure, are still live on Firesprite’s website. At the time, we speculated that the project could be tied to Sony given the team’s close links to PlayStation. The company has several other projects in the works, though it’s not clear if these are VR-supported or not.
Notably, the news also comes after Sony closed another PSVR-exclusive developer in the nearby town of Manchester last year. That team was reported to have been working on a helicopter action game for the headset.
The headline also breaks as we await more information about the confirmed PS5 VR headset. We know it’s not releasing this year and that we won’t see it at Thursday’s big PlayStation Showcase, but we are expecting to hear much more in 2022. UploadVR was the first to reveal specs for the device earlier this year.
A new report from Bloomberg claims that the PS5 VR headset will launch in the holiday 2022 period with an OLED display.
The article, which largely covers Japan Display Inc’s shift to making LCD VR displays, cites “people with knowledge of the matter” in saying the device will launch later next year and feature OLED panels from Samsung.
The original PSVR also uses an OLED display, as did the original Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. But Facebook & HTC now use cheaper, higher resolution LCD panels. Bloomberg’s report suggests this shift to LCD will continue in VR, with Sony as the exception to the rule.
Sony confirmed it was working on a new VR headset for the PS5 earlier this year, but stated it would not be released in 2021. A holiday 2022 window isn’t too surprising; developer kits for the device are being sent out around now, giving studios a decent window to prepare software for the device. The original PSVR launched in October of 2016, too.
That said, the window between now and late 2022 leaves plenty of room for Facebook to grow in the VR space. The company’s Oculus Quest 2 standalone headset has already outsold every other Oculus headset combined and the company has acknowledged a possible ‘Pro’ version of the device that could well also launch in 2022.
Last month we reported that the PS5 VR headset — which doesn’t have an official name — featured a resolution of 4000×2040 pixels (2000×2040 per eye), a lens separation adjustment dial, and gaze tracking capable of foveated rendering.
What do you think of the new PS5 VR headset potentially launching in late 2022? Let us know in the comments below.
Release details for upcoming PSVR exclusive Fracked should be revealed “very soon”.
That’s according to developer nDreams, writing on Reddit after the debut of new gameplay from the title at the Upload VR Showcase last weekend. Asked how much the game would cost, the studio replied: “We’ll be able to share more about that VERY SOON!”
Fracked Release Details Coming Soon
The studio didn’t offer any more specific dates but, given the very excitable caps, maybe we’ll hear something in the next few weeks. The game is due for release this summer on PSVR, so expect a release date that’s right around the corner.
Revealed earlier this year, Fracked is a single-player first-person shooter that focuses on agile, explosive combat. We haven’t been hands-on with the game yet, but we’ll be very interested to see how it holds up on the PlayStation Move controllers. The game will have enhancements when played through PS5 via backwards compatibility, too.
“We can’t talk to future platform support,” the team added when asked about a possible version for the new PS5 VR headset, “but we can confirm there’s definitely a story on offer here and we think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the play-time.”
We’ll also have a lot more to share on Fracked right here in July. As we confirmed at the Showcase, the game will be in the Upload Access spotlight next month, so expect more details and interviews with the team.
Are you looking forward to Fracked? Let us know in the comments below!
Stress Level Zero developer Brandon J. Laatsch teased progress on the studio’s next game on Twitter, reafirming that it would be coming to Quest 2, PC VR and potentially even PSVR 2.
The initial tweet from Laatsch indicated that he was playing around with the game and preparing footage, potentially to be released sometime in the future. Here’s the full tweet:
Progress update on showing the next game: We’re playing through builds of what we intend to show/film daily. Frame rate is 90% of the way there. Needs sound, sequence, and scene polish and some bugs. I spent an hour messing around with three bodies on an escalator last night.
In a follow-up reply tweet, Laatsch revealed that the game in question would be coming to “Quest 2 and PC VR” with a “decent chance” of PSVR 2, if they got developer hardware. It had previously been revealed the game would be launching for Quest and PC VR.
We reached out to Stress Level Zero for comment on whether this ‘next game’ is in fact the Boneworks spin-off announced for Quest at Oculus Connect 6, and whether the game will release just for Quest 2 or for both Quest headsets. We will update this article if we receive a response.
