Update: After publication we received the following comment from a Google Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) spokesperson:
“ATAP is at the intersection of science and application where our goal is to solve significant problems and close the gap between what if and what is. We’re super excited about Richard joining the senior team and look forward to his contributions.”
Original: According to a report from VentureBeat, Richard Marks, a former senior researcher and head of PlayStation’s Magic Lab who helped create the PlayStation VR (PSVR) headset and PS Move controllers, has left Sony to join Google.
As of now we’ve got no real idea what his role at Google will be or what this means for the future of Sony’s PSVR. In fact, Google recently hired Phil Harrison, the former head of Sony’s game research and development for worldwide studios, Jack Buser, the former PlayStation Home chief, and even the creator of Xbox Live Arcade, Greg Canessa.
Clearly it seems that Google is amidst a big push for game-focused talent and is likely building up to something huge. There have been rumors of a “Google Yeti” which could be a cloud-based gaming platform to rival PlayStation and Xbox. If the Yeti were going to have VR features, hiring Marks would be a great way to prototype and engineer that sort of support.
While running Sony’s Magic Lab, Marks was in charge of R&D of future-focused concepts and ideas. In that role he helped create the PS Move controllers and PSVR headset as we mentioned, as well as the EyeToy (the predecessor of the PS Camera).
We’ve reached out to both Sony and Google for comment.
Sony Europe is holding its PS4 summer sale a little later than most this year, but there’s still some great deals on PSVR games that you won’t want to miss.
Probably the best offer of the bunch is Wipeout: Omega Collection, which is down to £12.99. This excellent sci-fi racer got full PSVR support earlier this year and is easily one of the best reasons to own a headset at this point in time. There’s full standard display support too, should you need it.
Resident Evil 7’s Gold Edition is also down to £24.99. That’s still quite pricey, but don’t forget this edition of the game includes all of the content from the season pass as well as a brand new campaign added on at the end of 2017 (and yet another campaign that was released for free, too). Again, it has optional PSVR support and is absolutely one of the best games on the system right now.
Other than that, there’s a handful of decent offerings, though we’re expecting a wider sale to launch later in the day. Now that it’s been patched to resemble something half-decent you might want to give Bravo Team a try at £12.49, though remember it’s best played with the Aim Controller. Madcap tie-in, Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-Ality is also just £13.49 now and Star Trek: Bridge Crew hits its usual sales price of £15.99.
It’s Amazon Prime Day 2018. That means customers subscribed to the retailing overlord’s premiere service can get a little bit of money slashed off of things they don’t really want. Well, that’s not entirely true; there are actually some pretty decent offers in the VR space this year that we should point out.
We’ll update this page with new deals as they go live throughout the day, but there’s already some stuff you should definitely be interested in. Deals expire tomorrow at midnight local time.
This is actually a pretty excellent deal for anyone that hasn’t picked up a PSVR headset yet. For £230, which is what Amazon usually charges for the base headset alone, you also get the PlayStation Camera needed to track the device, a digital copy of entertaining minigame collection, PlayStation VR Worlds, and two Move motion controllers. The last two are a great addition, as they’re usually priced around £60 and are essential for many of PSVR’s better titles.
Of course, you’ll actually need a PlayStation 4 console to run your PSVR. Amazon has you covered there, too, with two really good deals on the two different types of PS4 consoles out there. The base PS4 can run any PSVR title no questions asked, but the £299.99 Pro model will ensure better performance and visuals on many of them, too. Personally, we’d go Pro.
Unsurprisingly Oculus has slashed another £50 off of the price of its premiere VR headset for Prime Day. £349 now gets you the Rift, two Touch controllers and two sensors to track them with. That’s everything you need to get into PC VR beside, y’know, a PC.
PSVR has a lot of great games, many of which were made by Sony itself. But, to Sony, making its own games to go alongside its new platform isn’t just a good idea; it’s a necessary part of helping the platform grow.
Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Shawn Layden said as much during an on-stage session at Gameslab this week, as reported by VentureBeat. Speaking of the games PlayStation develops in-house, Layden explained that he looks for three things when greenlighting projects: First, Best and Must. First refers to inventing new genres, Best is about leading the way forward, but Must has more to do with technologies like PSVR.
“There are some games we must do, even if initially the profitability might be hard to make,” Layden said. “For example, an easy one for that is [PlayStation VR] games. When you’re trying to grow the PSVR installed base, how many units are in homes, it’s difficult for some third parties to look at that addressable market and get the business to work for them. But we need games to move the platform. It’s a chicken-and-egg thing. So, at Worldwide Studios, we took on a number of PSVR projects in order to support the launch of that platform and getting it off the ground.”
What Layden’s talking about isn’t too dissimilar to the launch of any other PlayStation console, though it’s doubly true of VR, which is still struggling to attract major developers over two years into its consumer lifecycle. You can see the same process happening with Oculus with its Studios games like Lone Echo.
“Must is sometimes driven by technology,” Layden later said. “We decide to do VR. We have PSVR technology. We’ve been working on that for six years. We’re in a place where the technology is ready to come to market, and we need some games that can help explain why VR is important and what VR can do.”
Sony is still making first-party VR titles to that effect. PlayStation VR Worlds developer Sony London is now working on London-set shooter, Blood and Truth, while Sony Japan recently revealed Astro Bot: Robo Rescue. There’s also a new UK-based developer studio working exclusively on PSVR content.
That said, we do hope that Sony one day manages to move its work in VR gaming from ‘Must’ to ‘Best’.
Sculpting VR creativity platform SculptrVR is the work of just two people and yet, over the last two years, they’ve brought the software to practically every major VR platform. PSVR becomes the latest headset to get SculptrVR with a launch today.
Nathan Rowe and Brandon Hjelstrom work together on the project, which is based around Rowe’s voxel engine while Hjelstrom “has done more of the interactions, multiplayer, and content server.” The software was originally released for the HTC Vive launch in April 2016. Here’s the original trailer:
And here is what it looks like more recently:
Each of the creators took the lead on different ports as they brought SculptrVR to more headsets — Oculus Touch, Gear VR, Go, Daydream and, now, PSVR. Bringing the software to so many headsets means Rowe and Hjelstrom faced a number of tough decisions and sacrifices along the way. After all, they started with a creativity platform built to take advantage of intuitive 6dof hand interactions and then they brought a version of it down to 3dof mobile headsets with multiplayer working between them. This means their software also offers unique insight into the advantages of each platform.
With the PSVR launch I thought it would be a good time for a Q&A with Rowe focused on some of the challenges they’ve faced bringing SculptrVR to so many VR headsets.
Q: Why did you pick Vive as your first platform and how did you plan to expand beyond there?
A: Vive was the first consumer VR headset to launch with integrated motion controllers, so it was the obvious place to launch first. We actually released SculptrVR on April 4, 2016 — one day before the Vive launch — because I saw a reddit post where someone already received their Vive. Our intention was to launch second on PSVR. That didn’t exactly pan out. We ended up launching on Rift, then Daydream, then GearVR and Go before finally hitting PSVR. We built SculptrVR in Unreal Engine 4 specifically because it was known to run well on PS4. We’ve had builds of SculptrVR running on PSVR since before its launch back in mid 2016! But back then SculptrVR was releasing major new content updates every couple weeks. We were evolving way too fast to lock down a build for PSVR launch.
Q: What was the biggest surprise or challenge in actually trying to implement a cross-platform VR game?
A: The Good: Multiplayer is easy. I said that wrong.. Multiplayer was hard, but once you have multiplayer working with dedicated servers, it automatically works on all platforms in UE4. Epic has had decades of time to mature their multiplayer framework, and it shows!
The Bad: Cross platform voice chat is surprisingly hard. It’s 2018 and FINALLY there’s starting to be easy to integrate cross-platform voice chat solutions. Until recently the only integrated voice chat solutions in UE4 were piggy-backing off one of the platforms. There’s Steam Chat, Oculus Chat, PlayStation Chat, etc., but they couldn’t talk to each other. Today we still haven’t implement cross platform voice chat into SculptrVR! That’s high on our list of next things to add, though.
The Ugly: We used to be able to push updates every day or two as we added even the tiniest features. But for cross-platform multiplayer to work, we need to push updates onto 5 platforms simultaneously! We’ve reduced our update rate to once per month or so to deal with that.
Q: How much work goes into each new platform you launch on?
A: Unreal Engine already does 95% of the work for us. When we first got Oculus Touch controllers, we launched the release version of SculptrVR through Steam and it just worked! The controllers looked like Vives and most of the buttons weren’t hooked up properly, but it worked! We had to build a bunch of little platform switches to set the correct input manager, set the hand models, etc. Those were both PC platforms, though. Going from PC to Android was not so easy.
For Android, we couldn’t use any of the same interactions, rendering materials, graphics settings, or voxel engine settings. Porting to Daydream took 3 solid months of Brandon’s and my time. Porting to GearVR/Go was when we ported smooth sculpting from PC to mobile, so that also took a bunch of time.
PSVR took the most time of any platform. We’ve been trying to release on PlayStation for 2 years! That’s not because it’s harder to develop for, but because they hold us to a higher standard.
Q: Which platform was your favorite to develop for, and why? Least favorite?
A: PC is always where we develop new features first. Writing the code on the same machine that you test with saves so much time. It’s awful to spend 4 minutes packaging a new build to Android or PS4 and then have it crash on launch because of a tiny bug.
That said, Sony’s tools for developing on the PS4 are absolutely incredible, and every platform has benefited because of bugs we managed to track down thanks to Sony’s tools.
By far the most frustrating platform has been Android (and Daydream is worse than GearVR/Go). We have to support tons of different phones each with random missing features resulting in 50% performance loss in some cases. It’s a huge pain made even worse by the fact that we don’t even have access to most of these phones.
Q: How is SculptrVR different on PSVR compared to other platforms?
A: At launch SculptrVR is missing a few features on PSVR. We don’t have reference images, mesh export, explore mode, or multiplayer. We want to bring all of those features to the platform soon, but Multiplayer will probably not have cross play. The PS4 has a bit less power than the min specs VR PC, so we also had to change the graphics.We decided to drop shadows and build a custom baked ambient occlusion system to keep sculptures easy to understand in 3D.
Sony has a very serious Quality Assurance process. They test EVERYTHING. I think a team of 3 people spend like a week playing your games. They find every bug, and even report back when certain features make them sick. There were a ton of requirements around multiplayer that exist to guarantee a good experience for as many players as possible. Meeting all of those requirements is going to take some time, but we’re working on it!
Overall SculptrVR on PSVR has all the same creative potential as on PC, and we’re really proud of that.
Q: Do people use or engage with your software in different ways across the different platforms? How so?
A: Yes definitely! On Oculus Rift, dropped frames are not such a big deal thanks to Asynchronous Space Warp, so users tend to bump up the graphics settings and show more material. On 3DoF platforms, creation is not as easy, so users spend a lot of time shooting rockets and browsing the online gallery.
Q: What were the pros and cons of making the decision to port the full 6DoF PC head and hands version to a more limited 3DoF platform like Daydream and GearVR?
A: I’m a big believer in the future of mobile VR and mobile AR as well. The current 3DoF mobile VR is better than I expected, but certainly still feels limiting after PC VR. I came up with a cool way to give users direct positional control of their tool with a 3DoF controller. We use sort of a turn-key gesture to extend your tool out in from your hand. I proposed the port with this turn-key input to Google and they gave us just enough funding to pay for our development work during the port.
Getting SculptrVR running on mobile was a challenge. It definitely slowed down the development of new features in SculptrVR. But now we’re ready for full 6DoF mobile as soon as it arrives!
Q: When you sit down to use SculptrVR, which platform do you prefer?
A: This depends a lot on my goal of the play session. If I’m just checking out new creations uploaded to the content server, my favorite platform is probably Oculus Go. I love how easy it is to jump in and out of that headset, and it’s so comfortable! If I’m going to be jumping into multiplayer, there’s usually a lot of climbing and hang gliding, so I prefer the Vive. You still can’t beat the Vive’s room-scale tracking. If I’m taking screenshots or video, I usually use Oculus Touch because I can bump up the graphics and not feel the dropped frames as much. It’s really nice to have so many options!
Q: How has SculptrVR changed since launch?
A: When SculptrVR launched it was single player, cubey only, had no post processing, and you could only sculpt for about an hour before the engine would be overwhelmed and it would start dropping frames. We also only had 5 tools and 16 colors and still used the default Unreal Engine floor!
Now SculptrVR looks so much better, has an incredible tool collection including the stamp tool, supports smooth, poly, and cubey surfaces, has a full color picker, multiple sculpture layers, glowing, metal, and clay materials, cross platform multiplayer, hang gliding, and you can sculpt for a hundred or more hours without dropping frames.
Q: Will there be more platforms for SculptrVR and additional feature updates?
A: Yes and Yes. We’re wrapping up a new update soon that adds a ribbon/sword tool, snapping mode, a voxel exact box for cubey sculpting, an improved copy/paste brush with the ability to make perfect copies, and other random bug fixes. We’ve been building SculptrVR for almost 3 years, and could easily keep going for another 3. We’re really excited about 6DoF mobile platforms and AR Sculpting, so expect to see some news there soon!
Sony is closing in on 80 million PS4s sold around the world and likely nearing 3 million PSVR headsets at this point. Both of those numbers are quite large and means there is a huge potential market for the flagship VR device. If you’re one of the 77 million PS4 owners that don’t have a PSVR yet, then there’s a great Gamestop deal with your name on it.
You can read more about our thoughts on Skyrim for PSVR here, but suffice it to say that, despite the limitations of the PSVR and its Move controllers, this is easily one of the best VR experiences to date. The world is massive and the sense of presence is staggering.
At this price point, you can easily pick up a few other great PSVR games as well without breaking the bank.
Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
It wasn’t too long ago that Sony slashed $100 off of the price of its PSVR headset, taking it down to $299.99 with bundled games. But you’ll be able to get the kit for even cheaper during an official promotion next month.
Yesterday, Sony announced Days of Play, a 10-day promotional event taking placeacross the globe. From June 8th – 18th you’ll be able to get a PSVR bundle for $199.99 USD/$249.99 CDN. It’s not clear exactly what bundle this will be, though the cheapest way to get the current PSVR unit (not the original model that was replaced last year) is via a pack that includes a copy of Doom VFR for $299.99. It’s possible that’s the deal we’ll get during Days of Play, then.
Over in the EU, meaning, you’ll be able to get the PSVR Starter Pack, which includes a copy of PlayStation VR worlds, for €249.99.
That’s far from where the deals end, though. Sony is also offering a limited edition Days of Play VR for $299.99 USD/$379.99 CDN which comes with two specially-themed controllers. As for standalone controllers, a DualShock 4 will run you $39.99 USD/$49.99 CDN, a pair of PS Move motion controllers will cost $79.99 USD/$99.99 CDN, and the standalone PSVR Aim controller, available only in the US, will cost $49.99.
As for games, you’ll be able to get Gran Turismo Sport for $19.99 USD/$29.99 CDN, Farpoint for $14.99 USD/$19.99 CDN, The Inpatient for $14.99 USD/$19.99 CDN and Bravo Team for $29.99 USD/$39.99 CDN. Quick hint: don’t get Bravo Team.
Notably, the promotion is running over E3 2018, including Sony’s showcase on Monday, June 11th. If you don’t feel like there’s much of a reason to pick up PSVR thus far, let’s hope Sony gives you a few more reasons then.
Remember when The Prestige and The Illusionist, two movies about magicians, both released the same year? Or when EverQuest 2 foolishly released the same year as World of Warcraft? Or that other time Gearbox decided it made perfect logical sense to release Battleborn in literally the exact same month as Blizzard’s Overwatch?
Pop culture is full of weird situations like this where movies and games that seem too similar to be coincidences are developed and released alongside one another. I’ve got a feeling we might have another scenario just like that in the VR market right now with Blood and Truth versus Defector. Both games want to tap into that visceral excitement that’s all-too-often associated with spy action movies by making you feel like a James Bond-esque hero and both games are exclusives for their respective platforms.
The below video was captured at a demo event last October.
In the case of Defector on Oculus Rift, we’ve got something that features full locomotion via the Oculus Touch controllers, branching decisions and dialogue trees, as well as roomscale support with lots of set piece action scenes. PSVR’s Blood and Truth, by comparison, is starting to feel a bit anemic.
I got the chance to go hands-on with both last week almost back-to-back and it really drove the point home for me. In Defector I jumped out of an airplane, climbed on the side of a disintegrating jet, got in a fist fight, shot up a ton of thugs, and sweet-talked my way into a crime boss’ private vault. In Blood and Truth, I progressed from cover point to cover point shooting enemies and watched a few slo-mo explosions. That’s it.
Admittedly, my first demo with Blood and Truth several months ago was much more promising, but it’s a bit baffling that the new demo just a month away from E3 feels so bare bones and empty. Last time there was an exciting chase scene, a bunch of stealth, and a whole slew of environments as I scoured the floors of a casino. This time I just ducked behind boxes and air vents while waves of enemies attacked me.
After trying Firewall: Zero Hour at the same preview event on the other side of the room, Blood and Truth’s lack of locomotion really stood out. Given that this is basically an expanded version of The London Heist, you do have a bit more control here. During a level you can look around the environment and see pre-determined nodes pop up on the ground. With a press of a button your character will slowly slide over to those spots, as if he were walking, and you still get full control of your head and hands during this process.
This is a stark contrast to Bravo Team, a game in which you lose all control of your character when moving to a new node. During gameplay in Blood and Truth you’ll also have moments where you can strafe from side-to-side between cover points with the press of a button as well.
The game is played using two PS Move controllers so you don’t have an analog stick or d-pad of any kind. I’d love to see what a developer like Sony London Studio could have done with proper VR controllers like the Oculus Touch or Vive wands. I imagine we’d have gotten something similar to Defector as an end result.
It’s not fair to compare two unfinished games to one another that are on completely different platforms, but they feel like they were both based off of the same brainstorming session in which a wide-eyed game designer dreamed up what it would be like to play a Mission: Impossible VR game.
If I’m basing expectations off of my original Blood and Truth demo, I’m imagining a game full of varied missions that mix fast-paced action, stealth, hacking, and a litany of other game mechanics together to create something consistently interesting. But if I’m basing my expectations off of the most recent demo, I’m anticipating a wave shooter that’s wearing a very thin coat of spy-action paint on top.
Let’s hope the most recent demo I tried isn’t representative of the final game’s content focus because multiple hours of that would get very boring very fast.
During my demo a developer told me that at E3 they’ll have an even newer demo for Blood and Truth that lasts upwards of 25 minutes, which sounds quite extensive to show at an industry event. Hopefully that demo will leave me with a more promising impression.
Let us know what you think of Blood and Truth so far down in the comments below!
But now, based on reports from a recent pre-E3 preview event, it seems like the developers plans may have changed. We reached out to PSU to confirm the details of their story and they verified that Mark Healey, co-founder and creative director for Media Molecule, did in fact state it would have PSVR support from day one. We were at this preview event as well, but opted to not demo Dreams since we’d been told they weren’t discussing VR details at the event.
This is exciting news because in the past it seemed like it could have been relegated to the background as a secondary feature, but perhaps this means the majority (or all) of Dreams will function from inside a PSVR headset. If all goes well, Dreams could very well end up being one of VR’s most powerful content creation platforms to date.
Earlier this year Media Molecule’s Alex Evans even stated that he was “really hyped” for the app’s PSVR support, so all signs are pointing towards this being one to watch for VR fans.
If that’s not confirmation enough that VR is coming on day one for Dreams, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s own President of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, tweeted the PSU story today. Granted, the PSVR line isn’t the headline or a prominent part of the preview, but I doubt he’d tweet out a story with such an erroneous error in it.
We reached out to Sony for comment on the revelation, but they declined to comment at this time, simply stating that more details will be coming later.
What do you think of this news? Let us know down in the comments below!
Still playing WipEout VR? Yeah, good call, but if you don’t have a Rift or Vive then there’s one big release you probably have been missing out on until now that could pull you away and it features a mad scientist + his grandson going on crazy adventures.
If you missed last week’s releases, you can see those here. UploadVR also launched the ‘UploadVR PSVR Community’ on PlayStation 4! Join up, find other gamers to play with, and engage in discussions with them. Also, don’t forget to check out our list of the 9 Best PlayStation VR Games if you need any extra inspiration.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, from Owlchemy Labs
Price: $29.99
The creators of Job Simulator expanded on that game’s core premise to deliver a hilarious adventure across multiple dimensions in this Rick and Morty VR extravaganza. Not to mention a spoof of Roy: A Life Well-Lived that’s sure to earn its fair share of replays. Definitely recommended for fans of Job Simulator or fans of the cartoon.
Operation Warcade is like an arcade cabinet wave shooter transported into VR. The mechanics are fine, it plays well, and it captures the right tone, but it’s just not that inventive or fun to play in the grand scheme of things. Maybe worth it on a steep sale.
Time Carnage, from Wales Interactive
Price: $19.99
Time Carnage is another uninspired wave shooter that does nothing to move the genre forward or offer up a creative spin on existing tropes. You point, you shoot, you rinse, and you repeat. We’d recommend passing on this one.
