Sony PSVR2 in Trouble Abandonment Rumors and Future Uncertainties
TapTechNews June 24th news, Sony's PSVR2 has been a quite good VR headset with over 200 games to choose from. Renowned titles like 'Horizon: Call of the Mountain', 'Gran Turismo 7', 'Resident Evil: Village' and 'Resident Evil 4 Remake' have thrilled players. However, now PSVR2 seems to be in big trouble - it appears that Sony has seemingly given up on it.
According to AndroidCentral, sources say Sony has significantly reduced the capital investment in VR games, and the company's future opportunities to develop VR games will be very few. Currently, there are only two first-party PSVR2 games in the making, and considering the frequent layoffs and studio closures in the gaming industry, whether these two games can eventually come out is also full of uncertainties.
What's more disappointing is that Sony's star studio, Insomniac Games, has not developed any games for PSVR2. Remember that they once made widely praised VR works including 'Stormland' for Meta's Oculus Rift platform.
In 2023, Sony only launched three PSVR2 games and has not announced any first-party PSVR2 games so far in 2024, let alone in 2025. Among these three games, the developer of 'Firewall Ultra', FirstContactEntertainment, has closed. To make matters worse, Sony also closed its London studio in February, which was in charge of another PSVR game with the highest popularity, 'Blood & Truth'. In addition, the developer of 'Horizon: Call of the Mountain', Firesprite, has also experienced significant budget and staff cuts and even cancelled some game projects.
In May's Sony State of Play conference, the highly anticipated new work of 'AstroBot' debuted, exciting fans. The first-generation work 'AstroBot Rescue Mission' is one of the highest-rated VR games in the history of PSVR and is a must-play masterpiece in the minds of many players. However, to the disappointment of players, the sequel doesn't support VR! For a game like 'AstroBot' that requires several years of development time, its sequel not supporting VR further confirms the rumor that Sony has given up PSVR2.
Another piece of evidence is the reason given by the studio head - 'We are 100% focused on the PS5 platform. VR and the traditional platform are very different, not all games are suitable for VR mode.' However, there have already been successful cases in the industry. For example, the studio Flat2VR made the original non-VR game support VR through modification, and the streamer ParadiseDecay also transformed 'Fall Guys' into a VR game through third-party tools.
The shift in Sony's internal strategy also seems to make matters worse for PSVR2. Sony's PlayStation business has been divided into hardware and software departments, and the head of the software department seems to have a narrow vision for the future of PlayStation.
In early 2022, there were rumors that Sony would focus on a hybrid 3A game strategy, that is, games like 'Horizon', 'Uncharted', 'The Last of Us', 'Spider-Man' would release versions that also include VR mode. But except for 'Gran Turismo 7', the VR versions of other works have not been seen, let alone 'AstroBot' which should be the most suitable for VR.
Give up pure VR games, and there's no progress in hybrid 3A. Sony seems to have no choice. Worse still, PSVR2 is not backward compatible with the first-generation PSVR games, and players can only look on in dismay.
Earlier this year, Sony announced that PSVR2 will support use on the PC side, and then announced a PC connection adapter priced at $60 (TapTechNews note: currently about 438 RMB), but阉割 all the core functions such as the HDR, vibratio n, eye-tracking, adaptive trigger buttons and controller haptic feedback of the headset.
So, AndroidCentral believes that rather than clinging to a abandoned platform, it is better to consider other options, such as MetaQuest 3 which has many exclusive games.