As first reported by Video Games Chronicle, the Liverpool-based studio Firesprite is moving to a much larger office, likely indicating some form of expansion.
According to Invest Liverpool, Firesprite and Sony signed a 10-year lease on the new office, located in the Ropewalks district of Liverpool. The new office covers 50,000 square feet – a significant upgrade over the studio’s current office space, which covers just 2,519 square feet.
Given the huge upgrade in space, this could signal that Firesprite is gearing up for expansion and potentially taking on more projects in the near future. Sony looks likely to launch PSVR 2 in 2023, and while we don’t have a confirmed release date for Horizon: Call of the Mountain, it could be a launch title.
Regardless of its final release date, Horizon is likely in the latter sections of development. We recently got our best look at the game yet, featuring a full story campaign and a separate river ride experience. With all that in mind, it will be interesting to see what direction Firesprite heads in after Horizon.
We now know that the headset will also be receiving VR support for Resident Evil 8, alongside ‘VR content’ for the upcoming Resident Evil 4 port, as well as a handful of multi-platform releases. You can read about every confirmed and rumored PSVR 2 title here.
There’s also no release date for the Quest 2 version of the game either, but we do know that it will be a Quest 2 exclusive at launch. The game was announced at the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase in April, which featured a line-up of games that were all said to release within a year of the showcase airing. At the latest then (and presuming no delays) Ghostbusters VR would be set for April 2023, with a PSVR 2 release sometime after that.
So far, details on the game are scarce. We know that it will feature both single and multiplayer modes with cooperative gameplay, but little else. You can view the first trailer embedded above, but bear in mind that it’s a cinematic trailer rendered in the game’s engine — it isn’t actual 1:1 gameplay footage.
Today also marks the anniversary of the original Ghostbusters film, released in 1984. The PSVR 2 release isn’t the only piece of VR news announced today for Ghostbusters fans either. Sony Pictures Virtual Reality also announced a new location-based VR experience called Ghostbusters VR Academy. This will let up to 4 players don proton packs and pilot a flying ECTO vehicle at over 400 locations worldwide — more info here.
Commemorating the release of the original Ghostbusters (1984) film, Sony Pictures Virtual Reality (SPVR) today announced a pair of out-of-home VR games collectively called Ghostbusters VR Academy, coming to HOLOGATE locations worldwide. Sony also announced its previously revealed Ghostbusters VR at-home game is coming to PSVR 2 in addition to Quest 2.
Ghostbusters VR Academy—built by Hologate and published by SPVR—is rolling out to 400+ of the company’s locations worldwide by the end of 2022, the companies say. Hologate has designed out-of-home Ghostbusters games for both its free-roaming ARENA shooter platform and BLITZ, its motion simulator platform.
In the ARENA game, Hologate visitors will engage in Ghostbusters training by strapping on a proton pack and cooperating as a team in what the company calls “high-risk ghost encounter scenarios – all under the safeguard of academy grounds.”
Image courtesy Hologate, Sony Pictures Virtual Reality
The BLITZ game is a bit more of a thrill ride, where visitors race each other around in a prototype ECTO vehicle. Hologate’s motion platforms can perform up to one meter (3.2 feet) of vertical lift and a 30-degree movement in every direction.
Ghostbusters VR, a four-player cooperative adventure VR game initially announced for Quest 2, is also headed to PlayStation VR2. There’s no release date for PSVR 2 just yet, so we aren’t sure when the game is scheduled to arrive.
First unveiled at the Meta Gaming Showcase in April, Ghostbusters VR is a four-player co-op game developed by veteran VR studio nDreams. In it, players solve mysteries in the Ghostbusters universe while tracking, blasting, and trapping ghosts across what the studio calls an “extensive and engrossing campaign.”
For all the details on how Horizon: Call of the Mountain will work when you enter a world of robots, here's everything we know about this upcoming PSVR 2 title.
Resident Evil 4 is getting a remake for PS5 soon, and although Capcom didn’t state it was bringing full PSVR 2 support when it was announced back in June, the developer now says its VR mode is in the works right now, and it will be offered as free DLC to the flatscreen game on PS5.
Update (February 22, 2023): The Japanese language Capcom Twitter announced that the Resident Evil 4 remake team has now started development on its PSVR 2 mode.
It’s not clear when it will launch, however the studio further confirmed that the “VR mode,” which presumably means we’ll be playing the full game on PSVR 2, will be a free DLC to the flatscreen game on PS5. This comes as contrast to the announcement in June of “VR content,” which left some room for doubt. The original article follows below:
Original Article (June 3rd, 2022): It’s a marked departure from the full-throated PSVR support announcement for Resident Evil 7 Biohazard when it was first unveiled at E3 2016, which lets you play the game start to finish in VR.
This makes it a bit unclear as to what “PSVR 2 content” really means, as it could either suggest full support, or ‘experience-style’ bonus material, which would frankly be a bit of a letdown.
Image courtesy Capcom
After all, Resident Evil 4 is already playable in VR via Meta Quest 2, although there are some key differences to note. The version for Quest 2 wasn’t a remake as such, but rather an uprezzed port of the original game, while the PS5 version is slated to be a ground-up remake ostensibly in the same vein of Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020).
It seems dubious that all the VR-specific work Armature Studio put into the Quest 2 version will necessarily translate since we’re essentially dealing with an entirely different point of departure in terms of development. What’s more, Capcom had no issue announcing that Resident Evil Village is coming to PSVR 2 with full motion controls.
This could point to two likely scenarios: Capcom is playing coy and will announce that its “PSVR 2 content” allows you to play the full game, either at launch or at some point afterwards, or we’re really actually just getting a PSVR 2 flavored experience. Either way, we’re hoping to find out before the game’s March 24th, 2023 launch date.
Check out the game’s PS5 announcement trailer below:
The redemption arch for one of the biggest flops in gaming history still isn’t over. Hello Games announced at PlayStation’s State of Play that it’s bringing No Man’s Sky to PSVR 2.
No Man’s Sky has been playable on PSVR for around three years now with the launch of the game’s ‘Beyond’ update in 2019, however now the massive space exploration sandbox is looking to immerse users on PSVR 2 as well.
Hello Games says in a PS blogpost that with the power of PlayStation 5 and the PSVR 2 headset and Sense controllers, that it combines to “take that sense of immersion and believability up by several major notches.”
At very least, the addition of Sense controllers will certainly up the immersion as users will not only have significantly better controller tracking, but also better haptics all around, which should make punching out of atmo that much more realistic.
And that’s not even taking into account that PSVR 2’s display resolution is significantly higher than its aging predecessor. PSVR 2 also features head-mounted haptics and eye-tracking, which will be interesting to see too. Check out our comparison guide between PSVR and PSVR 2 to see just what the hardware has to offer.
The studio says it will be talking more about the specific features of No Man’s Sky for PlayStation VR2 in the coming months. We’ve seen other games announced at State of Play that suggest a 2023 launch, although Hello Games hasn’t said as much.
If it’s anything like its launch on PSVR though, support for PSVR 2 could likely land as a free update to the base game.
PlayStation VR 2 doesn’t have a release date yet, although Sony is promising to toss out a number of game trailers today that might give us a good idea of at least some of the launch content arriving alongside the company’s next-gen VR headset.
The video goes live today at 3PM PT (local timezone here), and promises to deliver “some exciting reveals from our third-party partners, plus a sneak peek at several games in development for PlayStation VR 2.”
Check out the livestream below:
As for which games to expect in the reveal—that’s still largely a mystery. We’re at least guaranteed to see more of Horizon: Call of the Mountain, the PSVR 2 exclusive from Firesprite and Guerilla Games. We’ve seen a short clip on Twitter that’s promising a “new look” during State of Play.
Tomorrow: Get a new look at Horizon Call of the Mountain for #PSVR2 during State of Play.
Horizon: Call of the Mountain is said to let platers meet Aloy (the main character of the Horizon games) and “other familiar faces,” however they will play as a completely new character.
There are a few unfounded rumors floating around, so please ingest with salt: a Killzone franchise game from Supermassive Games, a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II VR mode, Resident Evil Village VR mode, and even reports of a Half-Life Alyx port from Valve. Some of these are dubious at best (looking at you, HLA), so we’ll just have to wait and see.
Whatever the case, it’s clear the community has high expectations of AAA-quality titles coming to PSVR 2. The company has previously confirmed that “20+ major first-party and third-party titles” are coming to the headset at launch. Considering the company is already talking about launch titles, we’re really hoping they drop some sort of release window on us today.
Tomorrow sees Sony finally lift the lid on at least a little of what it’s been cooking up for PSVR 2.
PlayStation’s State of Play showcase returns at 3pm PT on June 2. Alongside updates on third-party flatscreen games, Sony is promising a “sneak peek at several games in development for PlayStation VR2.” The show’s expected to clock in at just under 30 minutes.
Recently, State of Play broadcasts haven’t been where Sony makes its giant announcements — those were saved for a bigger PlayStation Showcase in 2021 — so we’re not expecting an exhaustive amount of information to come our way. But we do have our fingers crossed for an enticing tease of what’s to come for the PS5 VR headset, including reveals of several big titles. Here’s our predictions.
Horizon Call Of The Mountain Gameplay
There’s a handful of confirmed PSVR 2 games out there right now, but Sony’s own Horizon Call Of The Mountain is the only one the company’s officially acknowledged itself. We got just a few glimpses of the game at CES 2022 back in January, but we’d fully expect to see more at tomorrow’s showcase. Developed by The Persistence studio, Firesprite, Call Of The Mountain is likely to fully utilize most if not all of PSVR 2’s new features in one way or another, so it’s undoubtedly one of the games Sony will be most keen to talk about.
New Native VR Games: Firewall 2, Coatsink’s VR Project
Whilst hopes are high for some huge announcements from beloved series tomorrow, it’s also important that Sony shows its commitment to VR-exclusive developers and games made specifically for the platform. To that end, we’d expect to hear some news from more dedicated studios making titles you can’t play without PSVR 2. First Contact Entertainment already confirmed it’s working on a PSVR 2 project and, as developers of the hugely popular Firewall Zero Hour, a sequel seems like a good bet. Coatsink is also working on a PSVR 2 launch title, said to be a co-op survival game. Again, that seems like a safe prediciton.
Flatscreen Support: Gran Turismo 7 VR And Resident Evil 8 VR
We’re also expecting PSVR 2 to feature a wider array of hybrid VR games that can be played both with and without the headset, similar to Hitman 3 and No Man’s Sky on the original PSVR. Such a strategy might entice PS5 owners to pick up a headset to revisit their existing category of games. From this category, the two most obvious choices to our minds are Resident Evil 8 and Gran Turismo 7. VR support has been rumored for both for years now and past entires in both series supported the original PSVR headset. An announcement for either would be an easy win for Sony.
With PS5’s increased power, it’s also likely that we’re set to see a lot of games either jump from PSVR 1 to PSVR 2 with remastered graphics or even hit the PlayStation platform for the first time, having only been available on PC beforehand. Of this category, easily the most anticipated title is Half-Life: Alyx, which simply makes too much sense not to come to PSVR 2 at some point. But we’re also holding out hope for news on VR’s two other powerhouse action series – The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners with its incoming second chapter, or Stress Level Zero’s anticipated Boneworks follow-up, Bonelab. Again, any confirmation of one of these three games would be great news for PSVR fans.
No PSVR 2 Price Reveal, But Maybe A Release Window
Sony has been conspicuously quiet about release details for PSVR 2. To date, it hasn’t even mentioned what year it expects the headset to release in, let alone a season, month or specific day. But that silence speaks a thousand words; it’s clear that the continued supply chain issues brought about by COVID — which have been hampering shipments and sales of the PS5 itself — have made it incredibly difficult to commit to a timeframe. Still, speculation has been pointing to a Q1 2023 release and we wouldn’t be too surprised to learn that PSVR 2 will indeed miss a 2022 launch during tomorrow’s State of Play. With that said, if the kit is still over six months away, we don’t think we’ll hear any word on pricing.
