After a few delays, we finally have a release date for the time travelling VR adventure — Wanderer will be available January 27 2022 for PSVR and PC VR via Steam.
RELEASE DATE ANNOUNCEMENT
We’re super excited to announce you’ll be able to don your time traveling shoes come…
Despite not making a release date in 2021, the good news is that Wanderer is only just over 2 months off (yes, we are thatfar through 2021).
Developers Oddboy spoke about the delay on Twitter, stating that “the overall choice comes from us wanting to deliver a well-polished game that we are PROUD to share with you all. Pushing back to a solid date gives us the confidence to create that!”
To balance out the news of another delay, Oddboy also shared some short new gameplay videos with details on the game’s mechanics and lore.
Temporal transporter
Harnessing these black holes will need some managing.
Learn how to operate the mysterious time transporter – the more you progress and time jump, the closer you’ll come to understanding the transporter, and, more importantly, how to use it. pic.twitter.com/2MD72pr3aq
Time travel in Wanderer is linked to black holes, which you will harness using the temporal transporter (which can be seen in the video embedded above). Using the transporter will take you to loads of different locations, including multiple versions of the future, such as a futuristic version of Boston 2061.
You’ll be joined by a companion, Samuel the Watch, who is “useful in more ways than one “and can be upgraded using items found along the campaign.
Watch
Your trusted companion through the game is Samuel the watch.
As well as being an integral part of your journey Samuel is useful in more ways than one and you can upgrade your watch strap using items you find in your adventures. pic.twitter.com/K4qGQQ30n4
Back in April, a FAQ on the game’s Discord indicated that the campaign would be roughly 8 hours, with replayable chapter selection. In terms of platforms, PSVR2 is “on [their] radar” and the team is also “working on options” for Quest, but there’s been no solid news on a Quest port beyond that.
Are you looking forward to Wanderer? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
A recently-published patent filing from Sony Interactive Entertainment (the PlayStation division of the company) details eye-tracking technology that we could see in PSVR 2.
The document, which was filed in June of this year and published towards the end of September (as spotted on Reddit) details ‘Eye Tracking To Adjust Region-Of-Interest (ROI) For Compressing Images For Transmission’. That seems to be a long way of saying eye-tracking for foveated rendering, a term that is specifically mentioned in the document later on.
New PlayStation Patent Filing Shows Eye-Tracking
Foveated rendering is a means of using eye-tracking to detect where a user is directly looking on a display to fully render only the direct center of their vision. The peripheral area of the user’s sight isn’t fully rendered but, in theory, should be imperceptible to your gaze. This in turn drastically reduces the demands on the machine powering a given experience.
It’s long been thought that foveated rendering would be key to improving the fidelity of VR experiences. Earlier this year, we confirmed that Sony’s new PS5 VR headset (which hasn’t been officially named PSVR 2 yet) would feature this technology.
There are some interesting illustrations in the documents that give you an idea of how this might work. In the image below, for example, we can see a representation of a normal, fully-detailed game image on the left and then another on the right that shows a high degree of detail in the center of the car, with that detail decreasing the further away from the center you get. “By utilizing foveated tessellation of real-time graphics rendering, detail may be added and subtracted from a 3D mesh for regions of interest,” the document notes.
At the end of the day, though, this is just a patent filing and not necessarily indicative of Sony’s work with PSVR 2. But we are expecting to hear more about the new headset soon, with a release expected sometime in 2022. You can keep up with everything we know about PSVR 2 right here.
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.
Camouflaj, the developers behind 2020’s PSVR exclusive Iron Man VR, are hiring a number of positions for a new AAA title.
There’s nine positions total, available over on the careers section of Camouflaj’s site, all of which describe roles working on “a new AAA project.” Some open positions include concept artists, gameplay engineers, animation leader and more. The listings don’t specify whether the AAA title is a VR title or just a traditional flatscreen game. However, many of the listings indicate that “experience with VR” or “experience working in the VR space” would be a bonus (albeit not a requirement).
Camouflaj’s focus has been on VR titles for a number of years now. Republique was their last non-VR title, released as an episodic stealth game for mobile devices and then ported and launched on GearVR, PC VR and PSVR. The team was also behind the PSVR-exclusive Iron Man VR — a game made in partnership and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
“Ultimately it’s up to how the game performs, it’s up to our partners over at PlayStation and Marvel,” he said. “But as developers we absolutely loved working on Marvel’s Iron Man VR and we would obviously be super interested to continue working on it.”
Having released Doctor Who: The Edge of Time back in 2019 – followed by the PC and console version The Edge Of Reality – and currently highly focused on Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom, Maze Theory is well versed when it comes to bringing big IP’s into virtual reality (VR). Way back in 2018, when the studio first formed, the project the team first teased was an original IP called The Vanishing Act. Renamed Engram, it hasn’t disappeared, in fact, Maze Theory confirmed to VRFocus that it is alive and well, with the current aim to bring it to PlayStation VR 2 and Oculus Quest.
Peaky Blinders: The Kings Ransom. Image credit: Maze Theory
VRFocus recently interviewed Maze Theory CEO Ian Hambleton about the studios’ metaverse ideas and how Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom was going. Inquiring about Engram and whether it still existed three years after first being mentioned Hambleton said: “So we’ve got Engram in the works, what we’re thinking is on that title at the moment is to push it back for the PSVR 2 launch, to launch it on Quest and PSVR 2 at the same time.”
Regarding that decision to push the launch further down the road, he went on to say: “What we decided on Engram, it was going to be focused on Quest because we didn’t want to compromise. By making it so multiplatform you sometimes have to make design choices that compromise things. So it was going to be Quest – because at the time we saw that as the future of where VR was going – and it will be PC VR as well, but we didn’t want lots of other controller options that weren’t going to make it as pure as it is. But now the sensible thing with PSVR 2 [on the way] the sensible thing is to push that back.”
At the moment how far back that’s being pushed is unknown as Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has yet to confirm and release window for PlayStation VR 2 – or an official name at the moment. Current rumours put the hardware launch during holiday 2022.
As to what Engram looks like and how it plays Maze Theory is still staying quiet with only one old image having been released. A brief synopsis does explain that the videogame is a narrative-based experience centred around people being able to “experience the memories of others and travel to deeper layers of their own.”
This news means the unrevealed PlayStation VR 2 now has another videogame on its roster, the third that VRFocus knows about. Engram now joins Pavlov Shack and the anime-inspired Runner. And cropping up on the PSVR 2 rumour mill last week saw mention of Firesprite possibly getting involved with the headset.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Maze Theory and its latest projects, reporting back with further updates.
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.
The next PlayStation VR is coming, it might not be this year but it is definitely set to arrive in the near future. And just like any new hardware, it needs some good videogames to back it up. Big IP certainly helps in that regard with a new rumour suggesting that Firesprite – the studio recently acquired by PlayStation Studios – could be working on a virtual reality (VR) title based within the Horizon: Zero Dawn universe.
The new rumour comes by way of the most recent Xbox Era podcast and Xbox Era co-founder Nick Baker, who has been informed by sources that Firesprite is “working on a Horizon VR game” which will supposedly be separate from the other titles, so it won’t be Horizon: Zero Dawn in VR. He went on to say: “I didn’t get told if it’s a full-blown game like Half-Life: Alyx, or if it’s an “experience” like thatBatman [Arkham VR] thing. That part I don’t know.”
Now, it isn’t the first time that VR and the Horizon franchise have been mentioned in the same sentence. A rumour surfaced in 2019 that Sony London Studio was apparently working on something but that rumour never came to anything.
This one could have a bit more credence thanks to the fact that Baker has a good track record with accurate leaks and that Horizon’s bow gameplay is a great fit for VR as numerous titles like Apex Construct have shown. Plus, with Firesprite now under Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE) wing and the studio having plenty of experience in the technology thanks to titles like The Persistence, it would be a good fit.
Additionally, when it comes to Baker’s remark about whether it could be a full-blown videogame or not, previous leaks regarding SIE’s plans for the PlayStation VR 2 suggest it would be. August saw information arrive that PlayStation wants to move away from “VR experiences,” focusing efforts on console-quality AAA videogames. Again, that would easily align both of these rumours.
As always this info has to be taken with a pinch of salt because at the moment there’s still no confirmation regarding when PlayStation VR 2 may arrive, just speculation it’ll be holiday 2022. As and when VRFocus can confirm these rumours we’ll let you know.
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.
Sony just announced what looks to be a significant PlayStation Showcase event for next week, but don’t expect to see the PS5 VR headset at the show.
The event takes place on Thursday, September 9 and will feature “updates from PlayStation Studios and some of the industry’s most imaginative developers”. It’ll last 40 minutes and have a focus on titles coming to PS5.
What it won’t have, however, is any new information on the PS5 VR headset Sony announced earlier this year. “PlayStation’s next generation of VR won’t make an appearance this time,” the announcement on the PlayStation Blog reads. “But there will still be plenty of great PS5 games from developers large and small. We hope you can join us!”
While disappointing, this is hardly surprising. When Sony announced its PS5 VR device back at the beginning of the year, it confirmed it wouldn’t be launching in 2021. Recent reports suggest it may well release in 2022, but we likely won’t hear much more on an official basis until early next year.
Given that Sony is reportedly looking for hybrid VR experiences that also work on flatscreen, though, it’s possible we see some games in the show that do eventually end up supporting VR too. Either way, we’ll be watching along and bring you any news, should it arise.
We have learned a lot about PS5 VR (which hasn’t been given an official name yet) over the course of this year, though. Make sure to check out our full rundown of specs, features and more right here.
RELEASE DATE ANNOUNCEMENT
JANUARY 27th 2022
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(@wanderervr) November 4, 2021
