Tencent Reportedly Scraps VR Headset Development

Tencent is allegedly scrapping development for a new VR headset due to profitability concerns and high investment costs.

After setting up an internal XR unit to create VR software and hardware last June, Reuters reports that’s been scrapped and the unit’s 300 staff members are being told to seek other employment opportunities. Citing anonymous sources, it’s said Tencent’s internal economic forecasts suggested this venture wouldn’t be profitable until 2027. It’s also claimed that the unnamed VR headset lacked promising games and non-gaming applications.

It doesn’t sound like development got particularly far, either. The report suggests Tencent got as far as creating a “ring-like hand-held game controller” concept, though short-term profitability worries, high investment costs and a “sobering economic outlook” within China saw the multinational conglomerate reconsider this approach. “Under the company’s new strategy as a whole, it no longer quite fit in,” one source is quoted as saying.

Tencent aren’t strangers to virtual reality and investments go as far back as 2015, later live-streaming VR concerts for music artists. Reportedly, Tencent’s renewed interest in VR came in 2021, following new developments with pancake lenses and improved displays, which was further encouraged by high Meta Quest 2 sales.

This doesn’t signal an end to Tencent’s investment in VR, however, with stakes in both Epic Games and Skydance Media, whose gaming division Skydance Interactive developed Archangel: Hellfire, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners and Chapter 2: Retribution, alongside upcoming action RPG Behemoth. More recently, Tencent participated in Skydance’s $400 million strategic investment round last October.

Developer Tweets Apparent Photo Of PSVR 2 In The Wild

Ultrawings 2 developer Bit Planet Games tweeted an apparent photo of a PSVR 2 headset in the wild yesterday, before removing the tweet and re-posting it with a generic promotional shot.

A screenshot of the now-deleted tweet, captured by UploadVR, can be seen above. It shows a supposed PSVR 2 unit, with two Sense controllers, sitting on an office chair, as part of a hint that Ultrawings 2 will be coming to PSVR 2.

In the new version of the tweet, embedded above, Bit Planet Games replaced the image with one of the well known PSVR 2 promotional images.

If real, the original image was likely of a early unit or developer kit sent out to Bit Planet Games to assist with development. That being said, dev kits usually feature a different, unfinished design to the final release units, as the final design is usually not finalized and production yet to begin. According to supply chain analyst Kuo, mass production of PSVR 2 is set to begin in the second half of this year. 

Responding to a reply featuring the original image, Bit Planet Games gave a coy response: Looks fake to us. Chair is badass though.”

We still don’t have a release date for PSVR 2, but it’s likely that many developers have their hands on dev kits already, to prepare for its eventual release.

The latest indications seem to point to an early 2023 release — the PlayStation Blog recently hinted as much, and supply chain analysts suggest the headset was initially slated for a late 2022 launch but has now been pushed back to 2023.

No matter when it launches, it looks like Ultrawings 2 will fly its way onto Sony’s new headset at some point in the future — you can check out our list of every other rumored and confirmed game coming to PSVR 2 here.

How Giving Mark Zuckerberg A Demo Changed My View Of VR

I’ve witnessed the VR space grow from its infancy, back at the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab. I was there when Mark Zuckerberg came in to demo the tech, and it completely changed the way I looked at VR. Here’s my memory of February 13, 2014:

It was easily the most important VR tour out of the thousands I gave at the lab. We built demos, prototypes, and most importantly, ran social science experiments. We also got to meet a lot of really powerful people, but meeting Mark Zuckerberg was different.

Before he arrived, his personal bodyguards did a walkthrough of the space to make sure it was secure. After they arrived, we asked our guests to demo a few scenes: walking a plank, flying through a city, chopping a tree, and looking at their avatars in a virtual mirror. Initially, I was worried that they would be unimpressed. During the plank demo, the floor opened up to reveal a huge pit, Zuckerberg instantly put his hand on his heart in shock. These worries subsided and I felt proud to have elicited such a visible reaction from Mark.

However, the tour was far from perfect. The tracking that day was more jittery than normal, and I ended up recalibrating it a few times throughout his visit. It really wasn’t a good look. We built the lab with custom infrared tracking, and sometimes I couldn’t predict how the system would perform on any given day. It was still early days for that tech, and we hoped Mark would be sympathetic as an engineer himself.

In the demo room, Jeremy Bailenson gave a charismatic pitch, while I sat on the other side of the glass, pulling the strings of everyone’s VR headsets. This “Wizard of Oz” system let us control the demos, instead of giving visitors full control of their virtual worlds. In the midst of the tour, I had a strange realization. Here I was, controlling exactly what Mark Zuckerberg was seeing, feeling, and experiencing. Normally he’s the one in control of our virtual experience.

I could manipulate Zuckerberg’s senses, and his brain would have to work hard to convince himself it wasn’t real. In that moment, I wielded an incredible amount of power, and I absolutely hated the way it felt. Who was I to push the buttons of someone else’s brain? Soon after the visit, Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $2.3B. In retrospect, Zuckerberg might have only visited us as part of his diligence on that deal, confirming that nobody out there had better VR tech than what Oculus was working on.

More importantly, I wondered if Zuckerberg had pondered how much power he had unwittingly handed to me, the driver of his VR headset. Did he know how easy it was to puppeteer someone in VR? Was that why he wanted to acquire Oculus in the first place? Over the years I’ve reflected on this moment a lot, and I’ve come to think that it’s very likely that Zuckerberg realized all of this, likely before even I did. What’s cooler than Facebook in two dimensions? Facebook in three dimensions.

That Oculus acquisition was a major catalyst in making VR go mainstream. It launched our digital spaces forward in ways we don’t yet understand. I feel honored to have been there for that moment, pressing the brain buttons of the man who had built systems which had already pressed mine. I hope for all of our sakes, he wields this power responsibly.

Cody Woputz worked at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University from 2010-2016 and the views shared here are his alone. He is a technologist that specializes in using real-time 3D engines to push AR/VR in responsibly novel ways. He is currently a Co-Founder at Receipts and holds an MS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University.  If you’ve got a SteamVR headset you can check out some of the experiences Zuckerberg saw by downloading Stanford’s Virtual Becomes Reality for free on Steam.

This story originally appeared on Twitter and is reprinted here as a guest post with permission from Woputz.

Little Cities Now Has Hand Tracking Support On Quest

Little Cities now supports hand tracking on Oculus Quest and Meta Quest 2. 

We recently spoke to James Howard, one half of the Purple Yonder duo responsible for Little Cities, shortly after the game’s launch, and we reconnected last week to discuss the game’s ‘Big Hands in Little Cities’ update. The update allows you to ditch the controllers and use only your hands for the entire Little Cities campaign.

 

After some discussions internally and a few requests from fans, Purple Yonder decided hand tracking support would be the game’s first big piece of post-launch content.

“We really wanted to jump in at the deep end and see what we could do and if we could make it playable with hands and that’s what we’ve managed to do,” he told me. “It was a lot of work to get to that stage, a lot of challenges, but we’re there and it’s working really well.”

To place objects and build roads, you’ll point at an area of the map and use the familiar pinch gesture, found in many other hand tracking apps. However, movement with your hands is a bit unique in Little Cities — you close and drag your hands in a fist to move laterally, while moving fists closer or further apart will let you zoom. Moving fists in a steering wheel motion will rotate the map.

Apart from that, a lot of the remaining buttons and actions transferred from controllers to hands without much modification. The wristwatch mechanic, for example, works almost exactly the same as it does with controllers. “That just works really well with hand tracking because you just naturally look at your hand and that all still works the same way.”

“When you’re selecting things, if you haven’t played Little Cities, the way it works is you have like a build bubble and you pop that with your finger. And then you get a section of other bubbles which shows different options you can build. And that just works really well,” he explains. “We didn’t really have to change much to get that working with hand tracking and it just feels really good, this kind of tactile feeling. Cause it’s not only you kind of popping these bubbles to select things, but it feels like your real hands when you’re doing it.”

The Big Hands in Little Cities update is out now on the Quest platform. Both Quest 2 and the original Quest will support hand tracking, with players on the newer headset being able to take advantage of Hand Tracking 2.0.

You can watch our full interview and check out some gameplay linked here and also embedded above.

This article originally published on June 27, but it was updated and republished with release of the hand tracking update on June 30. 

Installing Quest 2 Custom Homes & PC Game Ports Just Got Easier With SideQuest

SideQuest’s new in-headset app for Quest 2 and Quest streamlines the installation of custom home environments and popular community-made VR ports of classics like the original Doom, Quake, and Half-Life games.

The new app even makes it easier to find experimental App Lab projects that are also listed on SideQuest. You still need a PC to install SideQuest onto a Quest headset and sign up as a developer to get that access in the first place, but the SideQuest app now walks Quest owners through that process directly.

SideQuest has been available as a PC and Mac app almost as long as the first Quest headset, giving users a way to connect their Quest to a computer and sideload content that isn’t officially approved for the Quest Store. SideQuest is taking this a step further today by launching a new app that installs the platform directly onto Quest 2 and gives users an easier way to browse and install content entirely in-headset.

SideQuest Quest 2

Previously, it was possible to install the Android mobile version of SideQuest onto a Quest headset for similar results. However, the interface wasn’t designed for VR and things didn’t always work. With this new version specifically designed for VR, SideQuest can be used in-headset with much less friction.

A computer is still required for first-time installation via USB and to install the core files for classic PC games, like the doom.wad file for the original Doom game from 1993. Once the SideQuest app is installed on Quest it can be launched from the Unknown Sources tab and used to browse and download content like QuestZDoom directly to the headset’s internal storage without using the SideQuest PC app.

There’s also a section in the app for custom home environments. Users can browse from a selection of community-made home environments, download them and swap them out for the default Meta options. SideQuest is also launching new guides and presets for creating custom homes, which should streamline the process of creating and exporting custom environments.

SideQuest can even run with multitasking in Quest 2 if you move it to the side. In the below screenshot I’ve got it running alongside the official Oculus Store after using it to install the Star Trek: The Next Generation bridge as my custom home.

custom home star trek sidequest

The new app is available now alongside the original version because it doesn’t have all the features yet. We’ll be curious to see whether or not the custom homes work with Meta’s Horizon Home, which allows Quest to invite others to check out the same things in VR together.

Meta Research Suggests High Brightness HDR Key To VR’s Future

Meta research suggests VR’s most transformative gains in telepresence and visual realism may come from advances in display brightness and dynamic range.

Speaking on Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth’s podcast, the company’s head of display systems research talked about the enormous gap in brightness between the 100 nits provided by Meta’s market-leading Quest 2 headset and the more than 20,000 nits provided by its Starburst research prototype. The latter can match even bright indoor lighting while far exceeding today’s highest performing high-dynamic range (HDR) televisions, which top out at around 1,000 nits.

Douglas Lanman, Meta’s top display researcher, referred to this gap as what “we most want, but can least deliver right now.” The prototype is so heavy at 5 to 6 pounds with heat sinks, a powerful light source and optics, that looking into Starburst comfortably requires it be suspended from above and held to the face by handles. While we know Sony’s PlayStation VR 2 display will bring HDR to consumer VR for the first time, its exact brightness and dynamic range is unknown.

“You mentioned that you sort of feel your eye responding to it a certain way,” Meta Research Scientist Nathan Matsuda told Tested’s Norman Chan when he tried Starburst. “We know that there are a variety of perceptual cues that you get from that expanded luminance, and part of that is due to work that was done for the display industry for televisions and cinema, but of course when you have a more immersive display device like this where you have wide field of view, binocular parallax and so on, we don’t know if the perceptual responses actually map directly from the prior work that had been done with TVs, so one of the reasons we built this to begin with is so we can start to unravel where those differences are, where the thresholds might be where you start to feel like you’re looking at a real light instead of a picture of a light, which will then eventually lead us to being able to build devices that then content creators can produce content that makes use of this full range.”

For those who missed it, Meta offered an unprecedented look at its prototype VR headset research this week paired with the announcement of a goal to one day pass the “visual Turing test“. Passing the test would mean making a VR headset with visuals indistinguishable from reality. On Bosworth’s podcast, Boz to the Future, Lanman detailed the challenges in advancing VR displays toward this goal in four ways — resolution, varifocal, distortion correction, and HDR — with the last described as perhaps the most challenging to fully achieve.

Lanman:

In these [Starburst] prototypes we’ve built, you look at a sunset… And if we wanna talk about presence, you feel like you’re there. You’re on Maui, looking out at the sun going down and it sets the hairs on your neck up.

So this is the one we most want, but can least deliver right now. Where we’re at is just running studies, to determine what would work? How could we change the rendering engine? How could we change the optics and displays to give us this? But high dynamic range, that’s the fourth, perhaps king of them all.

The Starburst prototype, pictured below, demonstrated an implementation of extremely bright visuals in VR with high dynamic range (HDR), which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described as “arguably the most important dimension of all.”

While Starbust’s brightness significantly improves the sense of presence and realism, the current prototype would be “wildly impractical” to ship as a product, as Zuckerberg put it. If you haven’t dived into it yet we highly recommend making the time to watch Tested’s full video above as well as listening to the podcast with Lanman and Bosworth embedded below. As Meta’s CTO said, the prototypes “give you the ability to reason about the future, which is super helpful because it lets us focus.”

We also reached out over direct message to Norman Chan at Tested because his exclusive look at the hardware prototypes, and the comment he made to Zuckerberg that Starbust was “the demo I didn’t want to take off,” suggests HDR is likely to be a critical area of improvement for future HMDs. Where the gap between Quest 2’s angular resolution and the “retinal” resolution of the Butterscotch prototype is 3x, the gap between Starburst’s brightness and a Quest 2 is almost 200x, meaning there’s a larger chasm to cross in brightness and dynamic range before being able to match “pretty much any indoor environment,” as Lanman said of Starburst.

“The qualitative benefits of HDR were striking in the Starburst prototype demo I tried, even though the headset’s display was far from retinal resolution,” Chan wrote to us. “Getting to something like 20,000 nits in a consumer headset is going to be a big technical challenge, but I could see incremental improvements in luminance through efficiencies in display panel transmittance. What excites me is that producing HDR imagery isn’t computationally taxing–there’s so much existing media with embedded HDR metadata that will benefit in HDR VR headsets. I can’t wait to replay some of my favorite VR games remastered for HDR!”

UploadVR News Writer Harry Baker contributed to this report.

Zuckerberg: Meta Pay Is Part Of A ‘Wallet For The Metaverse’

Meta will introduce a digital wallet for use in the metaverse, as part of its Meta Pay (formerly Facebook Pay) service.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the news in a post shared to his Facebook account. Zuckerberg wrote that the company’s existing service, Facebook Pay, is now Meta Pay — in line with the brand changes taking place across the year. Zuckerberg also indicated that Meta Pay will soon include “a wallet for the metaverse that lets you securely manage your identity, what you own, and how you pay.”

He said that this will let you purchase digital items — “digital clothing, art, videos, music, experiences, virtual events” — with some form of proof of ownership. Zuckerberg said this would be important for using those items across different services: 

Ideally, you should be able to sign into any metaverse experience and everything you’ve bought should be right there. There’s a long way to get there, but this kind of interoperability will deliver much better experiences for people and larger opportunities for creators. 

Zuckerberg’s remarks on long-term “interoperability” are intriguing, and could be referencing functionality that works across a wider range of products from different companies, not just Meta. Just a few days ago, plans were announced for a new metaverse standards forum, with participation from Microsoft, Meta, Adobe, Epic Games, Unity, NVIDIA, and much more. This announcement is the latest is a string of updates from Meta and Zuckerberg over the last few weeks. Earlier this week, Meta announced a digital storefront for avatar clothing, coming soon to VR.The company also gave a peek at new research developments for VR display technology, including retinal resolution and HDR prototype headsets.

Vive Flow Gets A Business Edition & Optional Controller

HTC launched the Vive Flow Business Edition this week, an enterprise version of its lightweight immersive viewer headset.

As we covered in our review, Flow is the lightest VR headset on the Western market at just 189 grams. However, it’s a device with fairly niche use cases and some major caveats.

Flow is controlled by your phone as a rotational laser pointer, but that’s obviously not ideal for business use cases so HTC is now selling an optional $59 controller. The controller isn’t positionally tracked either though, it also just acts as a laser pointer. HTC says the controller can also be purchased by consumers.

Importantly, Flow is a tethered headset — to use the headset, it needs to connect to a USB power source. Flow only supports a very small and specific list of Android phones, with no iPhone or laptop support.

The Business Edition also comes with a two-year commercial warranty and an expedited return and replacement system, if needed. On the software side, there’s also ‘Kiosk Mode’ — this allows content to be queued or started remotely, on behalf of the user, and prevents accidentally closure of an experience.

Vive Flow Business Edition is available through Vive’s Business site for $499.

30+ VR Games Still To Come In 2022: Quest 2, PC VR & PSVR

It’s been a pretty decent year for VR so far, but there’s still a huge number of games releasing for Quest, PC VR and PSVR in the second half of 2022.

We’ve compiled a list of every confirmed title below — while some have confirmed release dates or months, there’s quite a few games without a specific date yet. Some just have a season or vague release window, but many others are just scheduled for 2022 without any other specifics.

At the very end, there’s a few games we know are in development, but without any indication of release window. Even if unlikely, a lot of these titles could hypothetically be a surprise release before the end of the year — fingers crossed.

2022 VR Games

Kayak VR: Mirage (June 28) – PC VR

A visually arresting take on kayaking in VR, this physics-driven experience lets you take part in single-player exploration and races across several stunning environments.

Wands Alliances (June 30) – Quest 2

Cortopia Studios follows up on its multiplayer spell-battling game with a new title that features 3v3 matches. Pick your spells and jump into arenas to magical combat with a tactical twist.

Vail VR (Beta, July 1) – PC VR

Competitive VR shooter Vail will be going into beta in July after an extensive alpha testing period.

Moss: Book II (July 21) – Quest 2

While already available on PSVR, this follow-up platformer starring adventurous mouse Quill will come to Quest 2 towards the end of July.

The Twilight Zone VR (July 14) – Quest 2

The Twilight Zone VR will launch with three different tales (or ‘episodes’), each essentially a mini story, that span different genres and are handled by different writers, much like a serialized TV show. A PSVR version will release at a later date — no word on potential PC VR or PSVR 2 releases just yet thought. 

Nerf: Ultimate Championship (August 25) – Quest 2

Nerf: Ultimate Championship brings foam bullet action into VR as a team-based multiplayer first-person shooter. You’ll be able to choose between different blasters and play across control point and arena modes, with some parkour mechanics thrown in for good measure. 

The Chewllers (Summer, Early Access) – Quest

This four-player co-op game will see you stand atop a tower, covering all angles as the horde or Chewllers approaches. Upgrade your weapons and repair your tower between waves to hold out as long as possible. The game will launch in early access for Quest this summer, with PC VR and PSVR releases planned later down the line.

Requisition VR (Early Access in September) – PC VR

Originally slated for a May launch, Requisition VR’s release window has been pushed as the developers relocate staff from Russia and Ukraine. The game is a survival VR zombie shooter, set to launch in early access on PC VR in September, PSVR in Q3-4 and potentially Quest 2 in the future.

NFL Pro Era (Fall) – Quest 2, PSVR

When it launches this fall, NFL Pro Era will be the first officially-licensed NFL VR game, available for Quest 2 and PSVR. It will include all 32 professional NFL teams and will let you embody the quarterback during gameplay.

Espire 2 (November) – Quest 2

This sequel will offer more sandbox stealth with some new features and mechanics, alongside a brand new second campaign designed for co-op multiplayer. It will release in November for Quest 2, but no confirmation for other platforms yet.

Among Us VR (Holiday) – Quest 2, PC VR

Among Us VR brings the viral multiplayer game into VR, where one player embodies the impostor and must murder the other members without arousing suspicion or being discovered. It’s coming to Quest 2 and PC VR during the 2022 holiday period, but there’s no specific date just yet. A PSVR 2 release has also been confirmed for when the headset launches — whenever that may be.

2022 VR Releases – Date TBC

Bonelab – Quest 2, PC VR

This highly anticipated follow-up to 2019’s Boneworks is the next title from Stress Level Zero, launching this year for Quest 2 and PC VR. Bonelab is an action-adventure physics game with a brand new story and “two years of innovation and interaction engine progress” from Boneworks. 

Red Matter 2  – Quest 2

Red Matter 2 will pick up right after the first game ended, taking you back to the mysterious planet plagued by horrific anomalies. You’re now on a rescue mission, searching for an old friend, with more environmental storytelling and puzzle solving. While it’s coming to Quest 2 this year, there’s no word on PSVR or PC VR releases just yet. 

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution – Quest 2, PC VR, PSVR

This Walking Dead follow-up game is set to release on all major headset platforms late this year, giving players a chance to step back into the world with a new map and weapons — including a gore-inducing chainsaw. A PSVR 2 release is also confirmed, but not until next year.

Gambit – Quest 2, PC VR

This co-op VR shooter will see you complete heist-style missions, shooting and looting with your friends through a 20+ hour campaign. It’s coming to Quest 2 and PC VR this year, but no confirmation of other platforms yet.

Killer Frequency – Quest 2

This will be the first VR title developed by Team 17, the acclaimed studio known for the Worms franchise. However, don’t expect a Worms-like game here– instead, this horror-comedy is set in the mid-US in the 1980’s, and casts players as a local radio host that must help the citizens of a small town avoid a mysterious masked killer.

Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom – Quest 2, PC VR

Based around the titular characters of Netflix fame, Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom is being developed by Doctor Who: Edge of Time studio Maze Theory and set for release later this year on Quest 2 and PC VR. It looks like a PSVR 2 release could be in the works too, but we’ll have to wait a bit longer for full confirmation it seems.

What the Bat

What the Bat is a VR follow-up to the flatscreen title What the Golf from Denmark-based studio Triband. You’ll have a bat in either hand, but you won’t be playing baseball — instead, you’ll do just about anything else. The game is coming to Quest 2 and PC VR later this year.

Ziggy’s Cosmic Adventure – Quest 2, PC VR

Ziggy’s Cosmic Adventure is an immersive pilot sim, where you’ll need to balance between ship combat and management while rocketing through space, coming late this year to Quest 2 and PC VR.

Propagation: Paradise Hotel – Quest 2

A sequel to Propagation VR, this single player horror sequel will see you fight in new encounters with all new mechanics. The game will release on “all major VR platforms” but Quest 2 is specifically confirmed for later this year.

Broken Edge – Quest 2, PC VR

This stylish multiplayer game will see two players go head-to-head in swordfighting combat. Developed by Trebuchet and published by Fast Travel Games, it’s coming to Quest 2 and PC VR later this year.

Hubris – PC VR

This stunning VR shooter is coming to PC VR later this year, with Quest and PSVR versions in the works as well.

Dyschronia: Chronos Alternate – Quest 2

The latest game from Tokyo-based MyDearest will see you play as Hal Scion, who will use his ability to access people’s memories to investigate the murder of a futuristic city’s founder. It’s coming to Quest 2 this year, with no confirmation of other headsets yet. It will be an episodic release split in three parts, but the studio aims to have all episodes release by the end of the year. 

Paranormal Hunter

You’ll team up with up to four players in this ghost-hunting multiplayer title, set to release in early access for PC VR sometime this year.

Tea for God

After a long time available as a work in progress on Itch.io, Tea for God will properly launch for PC VR on Steam later this year. No news on whether the Quest version will see a similar full release anytime soon though, but keep an out.

Trial by Teng – PC VR

Solve puzzles and work off your ‘Karmic debt’ as you try to work your way out of hell in this satirical VR title, coming to PC VR headsets sometime this year.

Ultimechs – PC VR

Ultimechs is a pretty simple concept: it’s soccer, but instead of kicking the ball, you’re firing rockets at it from a giant mech. While the game is coming to “major VR platforms”, it’s only confirmed for release on PC VR later this year.

Ruinsmagus VR – PC VR, Quest 2

Play as a novice wizard to become a spell-wielding Magus through 26 narrative-drive quests with full Japanese voice acting. Originally set for a spring release, Ruinsmagus is coming to Quest and PC VR sometime this year.

Vertigo 2 – PC VR

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about upcoming VR FPS Vertigo 2, but it’s seemingly still scheduled for release sometime this year. Hopefully more news is on the way soon.

The Exorcist: Legion VR 2 – Quest 2

The Exorcist VR horror game is getting a sequel with support for cooperative multiplayer. It’s set to launch in late 2022 for Quest 2, but it’s also coming to PSVR 2 at some point post-headset launch as well.

Upcoming Games – No Confirmed Release Window

These games are ones we know about, but have absolutely no release date — not even a rough year window.

It’s hard to say whether most (if any) of these will launch this year, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility, hence why we’ve included them.

Assassin’s Creed VR – Quest

Rumored to be titled Assassin’s Creed Nexus, we’ve not heard much about Ubisoft’s upcoming Quest title that will bring the famed franchise to VR for the first time. It could surprise launch later in the year, but we wouldn’t count on it.

Ghostbusters VR – Quest 2, PSVR 2

Ghostbusters VR was revealed at the Meta Gaming Showcase in April this year — a presentation that was prefaced with a message saying all games shown were set to launch within a year.

At the earliest, that means a launch sometime this year, but at the latest, it means a launch by April 2023 . However, it’s still possible the game gets delayed past that — we’ll just have to wait and see.

Horizon: Call of the Mountain – PSVR 2

While not a confirmed PSVR 2 launch title, Call of the Mountain’s release date obviously hinges on when PSVR 2 itself will release. And yes, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that PSVR 2 will launch in 2022 — 2023 seems much more likely now.

But hypothetically, Call of the Mountain could be a PSVR 2 launch title if the headset released this year. Don’t hold your breath though.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – Quest 2

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas Oculus Quest 2

Since it was announced last October, we’ve heard nothing about GTA: San Andreas on Quest. There’s a slim chance it launches later this year. Fingers crossed?

HeliSquad: Covert Operations – PC VR, Quest 2, Pico Neo Link 3

Only recently revealed, there’s no release window for this helicopter game coming from Warplanes studio Home Next Games.

Onward 2

downpour onward quest review header

While Mark Zuckerberg seemingly confirmed Onward 2 is in development, we’ve heard nothing since and there’s been no official announcement yet either. There’s a chance it could be announced and launched later this year, perhaps at Connect, but it’s hard to gauge how far development is.

Splinter Cell VR – Quest

Splinter Cell VRAll we know about this game is that it’s part of the Splinter Cell series and it’s coming to Quest — nothing else. It’s hard to see this releasing in 2022, given Assassin’s Creed seems likely to come first, but with so little information, it’s hard to know either way.

Resident Evil 8 VR & Other PSVR 2 Titles

As we covered above, it’s unclear when the PSVR 2 headset is launching. While a 2022 window is increasingly unlikely, Sony has yet to comment properly on the exact release.

If PSVR 2 were to release before the end of this year, then maybe we could expect Resident Evil 8’s VR support and some other titles to launch with it.


What games are you looking forward to most through the end of 2022? Let us know in the comments.

Quest Summer Sale Offers Up To 40% Off Select Titles

The Meta Quest Summer Sale has begun, offering discounted bundles of games and sale prices for popular individual titles as well.

As usual, there are a couple of bundled packs that give you a discount off multiple games (and will usually adjust the discount to exclude any games you might already own too).

The Sports Starter Park offers a 33% discount three games — Golf+, The Thrill of the Fight and Eleven Table Tennis, bringing the total price down to $36 from $54. Then there’s the Battle It Out pack, offer 28% off Superhot, Gorn and The Walking Dead Saints & Sinners, them down to $56 from $78.

The Multiplayer Favorites pack gives you 9% off A Township Tale, Demeo and Walkabout Mini Golf, down to $35 from $38.50. As is tradition now, there’s also a Vader Immortal pack that gives you all three episodes for $21 — down 29% from $30.

There are also discounts on individual games, ranging from 20% off up to 40%. Here are some of the highlights:

– Unplugged for $14.99, down 40% from $24.99

– Myst for $17.99, down 40% from $29.99

– Ragnarock for $14.99, down 40% from $24.99

– Virtuoso for $14.99, down 25% from $19.99

– Ultrawings 2 for $17.99, down 28% from $24.99

– Jurassic World Aftermath Part One for $17.99, down 28% from $24.99

– Jurassic World Aftermath Part Two for $10.99, down 26% from $14.99

– Stride for $10.99, down 26% from $14.99

– A Township Tale for $6.99, down 30% from $9.99

– After the Fall for $27.99, down 30% from $27.99

– Demeo for $20.99, down 30% from $29.99

– Walkabout Mini Golf for $10.49, down 30% from 14.99

– Eleven Table Tennis for $13.99, down 30% from $19.99

You can view the full list of discounts here, with the sale running for a week, until June 26. There’s also a new daily deal every day, available for just 24 hours, which you’ll have to check back for each day.

It’s not the only VR sale coming up this week either, the Steam Summer Sale begins in just two days. We hope to see some decent deals there as well — stay tuned.