Digital Trends
There are many indications that Sony hasn't invested many resources into VR, especially the PlayStation VR2 headset, but a new report suggests the situation may be worse than previously thought.
An Android Central article published on Thursday said Sony is cutting budgets for VR and there will be “very few opportunities for VR game development in the future.” Another source mentioned that the company only has two PSVR2 games in development.
While Sony didn't respond to any of the claims in the report, fans have noticed that VR isn't getting much attention. At PlayStation's recent State of Play, not a single first-party VR game was announced or highlighted. While we did get a glimpse of Alien: Rogue Incursion and Behemoth, which are set to release this year, both are from outside studios.
It seemed possible that there could be a first-party game in the Astro series, which has always used PlayStation hardware in ways other games don't, and was used as a tech demo for the PlayStation 5 upon release. Additionally, Astro Bot: Rescue Mission was an excellent VR title for the original PlayStation VR. However, following the reveal of Astro Bot during the presentation, Team Asobi studio head Nicolas Doucet told Digital Trends that a VR mode was unlikely.
“We're 100% focused on PS5,” said Doucet. “Rescue Mission was a lot of fun to develop. Every medium has its strengths. With a third-person game, it's completely different whether you're working on TV or in VR. The idea that we could add a VR mode isn't applicable to this type of game. It's applicable to some first-person games like racing games, but not to this type of game. So we decided to go 100% on TV, so that really as many people as possible play this game.”
Sony hasn't said much about VR publicly, but it hasn't completely ignored it either. CEO Eric Lempel told Barron's (via VGC) in October 2023 that VR is an important category for the company, but still has a lot of room to grow as it's a “young business.” The company is also working to expand the headset's user base, and recently announced a $60 adapter that will allow users to connect it to their PC. Unfortunately, many of the headset's features don't work when connected to a PC.
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