Don’t blink, because PSVR 2’s eye-tracking may get you more than you bargained for in the headset’s upcoming on-rails horror shooter The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR, which aims to toss some extra scares your way when you least suspect it.
PSVR 2 is releasing on February 22nd, and in its 100+ game content lineup is a unique horror game from the makers of Until Dawn: Rush of Blood which tosses you back into another rollercoaster thrill ride that arms you with plenty of guns to fend off what bumps in the night.
Besides bringing high-quality VR to PS5, Sony’s next-gen headset also packs in eye-tracking, which is many games are using for easier UI selection and foveated rendering—useful, but not terribly exciting stuff.
Some developers though, including Supermassive Games, are integrating the feature into their core gameplay loop, which in Switchback’s case allows enemies to move around specifically when your eyes are closed.
In a new gameplay video, Supermassive shows off the feature as it plays out beyond the big ‘DON’T BLINK’ doors, revealing a room full of grotesque mannequins which only move when you blink—and they’re entirely focused on attacking you if they can.
Alejandro Arque Gallardo, Game Director at Supermassive, says there’s also set to be another mannequin type that works with eye-tracking, but cryptically will work in “a completely different way.”
We’ve linked to the timestamp (above) where Arque Gallardo discusses Switchback’s eye-tracking mechanic. The full video also delves into haptics, adaptive triggers, spatial audio, and the multiple areas you can encounter in the game.
The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR is launching on March 16th, priced at $40. You can pre-order the game here. In the meantime, make sure to check out our growing list of all confirmed games coming to PSVR 2.
The Light Brigade is a roguelike shooter that I would mostly describe as a spiritual successor to In Death: Unchained, the critically acclaimed bowshooter from Sólfar Studios and Superbright. While at times a little less visually polished than In Death, the game’s variety of upgrades and array of WWII-era weaponry gives it a definite Wolfenstein bend that fans of the shooter genre will instantly be able to click into.
Available On: SteamVR, PSVR 2 & PSVR, Quest 2 Release Date: February 22nd, 2023 Price: $25 Developer: Funktronic Labs Reviewed On: Quest 2 (native), Quest 2 via PC Link
Gameplay
There’s a definite story in The Light Brigade, although past the opening scene I really couldn’t remember what was actually at stake up until I completed my first full run. The game doesn’t chock too much story your way (or over tutorialize either), leaving you to just fight the bad guys while you save the culty good guys. Really, all you need to know is the demon-eyed, Nazi-adjacent baddies aren’t friendly, and the hellish fantasy-scape composed of discrete and sequentially connected levels must be cleared out and scoured methodically for loot.
It’s just pure action-adventure fun, as the meat of the game presents plenty of interesting upgrade paths which not only prolong your current run, but importantly give you enough reason to come back for more upon your inevitable death.
The Light Brigade feels forgiving enough to really keep you grinding for that next gun mod or class upgrade too, which gives you access to cooler-looking and more powerful versions of each weapon. Meanwhile, the game is busy serving up a good difficulty ramp that means your next run may not be necessarily easier despite progressively wider access to guns, magic, and upgrades.
That’s all well and good, but what about the guns? Thankfully, The Light Brigade really gets its WWII weaponry right, providing physics-based rifles and pistols which each come with their own immersive reloading mechanics. Loading and shooting the M3 submachine gun requires you to grab its stick-style magazine and chunk back the charging handle to chamber the first round, while shooting a K98 rifle is totally different, making you jam down stripper clips to feed the bolt-action rifle.
Practically speaking, sticking to a single class isn’t a terrible strategy as you get your grips with the game, as you’re probably looking to maximize your rank and unlock permanent upgrades since they don’t sync across classes.
In practice though, you’ll probably do a fair amount of class hopping once you progressively unlock the next available class, taking you from the starter Rifleman class with its semi-automatic Gewehr 43 rifle all the way through the other iconic WWII weapon-wielding classes the game has to offer, including the Sturmgewehr 44 submachine gun, the M3 submachine gun (aka ‘Grease Gun’), the powerful K98 battle rifle, and even a class that has dualie Colt 1911s for some John Wick-style madness.
As for enemies, the world’s baddies come in a pretty standard range, starting with your standard goons, which include shooters and archers. You’ll eventually come across shielded goons, tanks, and versions that fly, snipe, and lob bombs too. There always seems to be a new type added to the mix after each attempt though, so there may be more I don’t know about.
By this point, I’ve already made it through one full run, although that was after many (many) failed attempts spanning over about eight hours of gameplay—another thing that makes The Light Brigade a little more generous than In Death, which is probably there to keep it a little more of a fast-paced experience.
Levels are fairly linear, although there’s plenty of cover to hide behind as you make your forward march. That also means finding the remaining enemies can sometimes be tough, but thankfully prayer actually works in this universe, helping you to locate remaining loot and baddies. Enemies are revealed by showing you small red dots while chests are yellow.
And once you’ve finally cleared out the level’s baddies—you get a big ‘LEVEL CLEAR’ popup—then it’s time to scour for loot, oftentimes hidden in breakable vases and chests.
Here, you can find gold to buy consumables, weapon upgrades like scopes and magical trinkets, souls which increase your rank level, and the occasional key, which can open locked chests.
Mostly though, you’re looking for souls, the whispy white things that you’ll earn after killing enemies or finding soul containers. There’s also cards that give each run a unique set of possible upgrades. Choose one of three presented to you, and you might just significantly increase the damage you can deal, injecting a bit of luck into each run’s loot haul.
It’s not all WWII guns and demon Nazis though. The world is also magic-based, giving you upgradeable magic wands that can do things like provide shields, shoot fireballs, etc.
All of this effectively combines to offer a good selection of gameplay styles, letting you attack the world as you want.
Still, I have my gripes with The Light Brigade, the worst offender being its inventory holters attached to your belt. In practice, this makes reloading quickly and consistently an absolute pain. Instead of having a fixed area where you can reliably train muscle memory, shifting your body around physically or virtually with any of the artificial locomotion schemes has a funny way of shifting the belt holster around your waist in weird an unpredictable ways.
I get it: you should be covering and assessing your ammo situation at all times so you don’t run dry during critical moments, but having to crane your neck down every few seconds to make sure your hand is actually hovering over the right area is decidedly a dull spot on an otherwise shining example of great VR gaming.
I’m still working on getting the last remaining achievements and consistently beating the first boss as I attempt my successive runs. Considering the array of gun upgrades and magical weapons to explore, it’s safe to say I’m nowhere personally finished with this well-crafted roguelike. I won’t talk too much about bosses, although they are hard, and offer up unique bossy ways of dealing out damage—pretty much what’d you expect from a fantasy shooter, i.e., they can shield, do magic, and surprise you throughout the encounter, so they aren’t just glorified bullet sponges.
Immersion
I get it: The Light Brigade is all about bringing light back to a dark and corrupted world, but it is very dark. At times, I felt it offered less visual contrast than Quest 2’s LCD displays can rightly handle, making some levels appear more muddy and generally more difficult to resolve visually.
Road to VR has a PSVR 2 in hand, although I don’t personally. I have had a chance to preview the headset though, and its OLED displays with HDR will undoubtedly be more capable of serving up better visual contrast. Still, if you’re playing on Quest 2 natively, or any number of PC VR headset running the Steam version, you may find later bits of the game very difficult to resolve visually.
Image courtesy Funktronic Labs
Were it not for the beady red eyes that shine in the darkness, enemies would be maybe too difficult to make out in the ever-present fog of war. Still, it’s a fairly muddy palette any way you slice it; level design and variety as you move forward are always interesting at least.
The star of the show though is inevitably the game’s weapons, which provide subtle articulations that really make it feel more of a realistic experience. For example, you can cycle a magazine’s worth of cartridges just because you mechanically can. You don’t need to, but the fact that The Light Brigade’s guns functionally work like real guns means the player should be able to if they want to. See my magazine empty as I eject unfired bullets:
Another immersive touch is the gun’s physical weight, which affects how you hold and steady it. A pistol requires a steadier hand because it’s lighter and easier to swing around, while a rifle is more forgiving with movement since the game registers as it being substantially heavier in the player’s hand. Suitably, some guns let you steady with your non-dominant hand, providing discrete attach points to do so.
I was hoping for some amount of melee, although there’s none present to speak of, meaning if your gun runs dry, you better find cover and reload, or pull out your trusty sidearm.
A note one positional audio: enemies provide good spatial audio cues for their relative locations—something important once levels start getting more claustrophobic, like in the sewers.
Comfort
The Light Brigade has a good swath of standard comfort options which, include optional smooth or snap-turn, and smooth locomotion or teleport.
Playing seated is possible, and the game comes with a seated mode, although it’s not advisable since your belt holster may be awkwardly positioned at any time, making standing play the least encumbering way to interface.
The Light Brigade’ Comfort Settings – February 15th, 2023
Turning
Artificial turning
✔
Snap-turn
✔
Quick-turn
✖
Smooth-turn
✔
Movement
Artificial movement
✔
Teleport-move
✔
Dash-move
✖
Smooth-move
✔
Blinders
✔
Head-based
✔
Controller-based
✔
Swappable movement hand
✖
Posture
Standing mode
✔
Seated mode
✔
Artificial crouch
✖
Real crouch
✔
Accessibility
Subtitles
✔
Languages
English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Russian, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional) , Korean, Japanese
Ahead of the launch of PSVR 2, we’ve got a close-up look at the finished version of the headset and what you can expect to find when you crack open the box.
It’s just two weeks until Sony’s newest VR headset hits the streets, and while we’re not yet allowed to go into detail, today we’ve got a close-up look at the production hardware and Sony’s official controller dock. Stay tuned for our full PSVR 2 review.
Photo by Road to VR
The very first thing to notice about PSVR 2 compared to the original is the simplicity of setup… this is everything you’ll see in the box.
PSVR 2 | Photo by Road to VR
Compare that to the original PSVR which had a breakout box requiring extra cables and its own power adapter—not to mention the PS Eye camera that was required for the headset (and the photo below doesn’t even include the Move controllers).
PSVR 1 | Photo by Road to VR
Compared to the original, PSVR 2’s single-cable operation and inside-out tracking makes it so much easier to use.
Getting closer to the headset itself, we get a good look at its range of adjustments. On the top there’s an IPD dial for dialing in the distance between the lenses. Also on top is a button to adjust eye-relief (the range of which is pretty impressive). And on the back is the crank to tighten the headstrap, with the center of the crank acting as a button which releases the springy tension.
As we learned in our early preview of PSVR 2, the headset has an assisted calibration step which helps the user hone in their individual headset orientation and IPD settings, thanks to the in-built eye-tracking.
On the bottom of the headset is the power button and a button to activate PSVR 2’s passthrough view. Alongside those is the built-in microphone.
Photo by Road to VR
While PSVR 2 doesn’t have directly integrated audio, it comes with a pair of custom earbuds which attached to the underside of the rear headstrap and stow in little holes at the sides of the headset. You can use your own 3.5mm headphones instead if you’d like to.
And then there’s the PSVR 2 ‘Sense’ controllers, which have a particularly interesting shape to them. Inside the circular strut is hidden infrared LEDs which can be seen by the headset to track the controllers.
Compared to something like Quest 2, the unique shape and placement of the ring does a good job of reducing the likelihood that you’ll bump the controllers into each other during hand-to-hand interactions. However, the design has a somewhat off-kilter balance to it.
The wrist-straps are mounted on the inside of the tracking ring and can be removed if desired.
The PSVR 2 controllers are rechargeable via USB-C, but Sony is also selling a purpose-built PSVR 2 controller charging dock to make it easy to charge your controllers without fiddling with cables. While its existence is appreciated, and it generally gets the job done, it’s a bit funky to sit the controllers in just the right spot to initiate the charge. Still, I’d rather this than plugging in two cables every time I’m done playing.
We’re looking forward to sharing our full PSVR 2 review in the near future—if you’ve got questions for us, drop them in the comments below!
Slated to arrive on all major VR headsets later this month, The Light Brigade is well positioned to make a name among the top VR roguelikes, as it follows most visibly in the footsteps of bowshooter In Death (2018) in all the right ways. In our hands-on, we got to see just how Light Brigade is setting itself apart though with a strong focus on an array of realistic WWII-era weapons and magical upgrades galore.
Coming February 22nd, The Light Brigade is the latest VR title from Funktronic Labs, the team behind Fujii (2019) and Cosmic Trip (2017). With a few hours of Quest 2 gameplay under my belt, I can say that The Light Brigade is certainly something to watch out for when it lands on PSVR 2, PSVR, Quest 2, and SteamVR headsets in the next two weeks.
Although The Light Brigade isn’t related to the award-winning roguelike bowshooter—In Death was developed by Sólfar Studios and Superbright—there are more than a few comparisons here to make. The Light Brigade similarly features a high degree of visual polish, well-realized enemy classes, and a fun array of weapons that make you really second guess stepping out from behind cover.
It’s also culty as all hell, as you battle it out as an acolyte warrior of light on a quest to pry the world from the grasps of the (totally not Nazi-inspired) Obsidian Forces.
What the hell does that all mean? I can’t say just yet, but it all ends up feeling like a cool mix of World War-inspired trench warfare mixed in with a heaping dose of medieval-style religious quackery and magic.
The Light Brigade tosses a smorgasbord of realistic weapons your way, all of which require a deft hand at manually reloading in the middle of a firefight. You’ll get your hands on rifles and pistols, all of which are upgradeable. Besides the Mauser C96 (aka ‘Broomhandle Mauser’), most everything is what you’d consider WWII standard stuff, including Gewehr 43, Sturmgewehr 44, Colt 1911, M3 submachine gun (aka ‘grease gun’), and Nambu Pistol Model 14. Guns have a virtual weight to them too, so you won’t be waggling around a 10-pound rifle or running too fast either when you’re supporting the gun with your non-dominant hand.
Each gun has three upgradeable power levels, which also let you tack on things like red dot scopes and powerful trinkets that allow you to charge and execute special shots. There are also so mini potato masher-style grenades, health kits, and interesting tools like deployable decoys which draw enemy fire away from you.
You’ll have to grind it out to level up each gun, which usually means sticking with the corresponding class long enough to generate points to sink into upgrades. The game’s actual difficulty seems to scale relative to your weapon’s current upgrade level, giving you more and different baddies to encounter as you head back in after your inevitable death—although that’s a bit of speculation on my side. There are two user-selectable difficulty levels though should things get too tough, ‘Arcade’ and ‘Realistic’.
Levels start out fairly small in size, although all of them encourage exploration thanks to the important items that can be found around every corner, such as the game’s tarot card upgrades that you’ll find in glittering chests. These buffs stay in effect for your entire run, and are automatically applied when you choose one of the three presented to you from each chest.
Image courtesy Funktronic Labs
My typical level run goes more or less like this: kill every enemy in the level, comb the entire level again for lootable chests and other goodies, and then summarily step into a trap, like the sort of couter-weighted log traps Arnold Schwarzenegger tangoed with in the original Predator (1987), or even a simple bear trap.
Once I’ve dusted off my stupidity, it’s time to head to the level gate, which requires you to bring your hands together in prayer to activate—a really cool and immersive touch. There are level bosses, although I only ever made it to the first, which I won’t spoil for your here.
Image courtesy Funktronic Labs
Meanwhile, I’ll be playing a lot more of The Light Brigade’s and reserving my thoughts on game mechanics and immersion for the full review later this month. Still, it’s safe to say I really enjoyed the entire vibe.
One thing to note is that Funktronic Labs included a good number of comfort modes, including smooth turn, variable snap-turn, smooth locomotion, and teleportation. Currently, the game’s inventory system includes a hip-mounted holster, which can be difficult to access whilst seated, making standing gameplay recommended at the time of this writing. We’ll have more info in our deep dive review when the game launches on February 22nd.
In the meantime, you can wishlist the game on Steam (PC VR), pre-order on PSVR 2 and PSVR, and pre-order on Quest 2—priced at $25. Also, in case you missed out on the announce trailer, take a gander below:
PlayStation VR 2 is just around the corner, and by this point Sony detailed all of the headsets core specs and features. Comparing PSVR vs. PSVR 2 specs side-by-side shows us how much has changed since Sony’s first consumer headset released in 2016.
Update (February 6th, 2023): With PSVR 2 launch day just around the corner, we’ve updated this spec sheet and commentary with the latest info, now including PSVR 2’s weight and cable length.
Among the major players in the VR space, Sony has bided its time on a follow-up to the original headset. By the time PSVR 2 releases on February 22nd, 2023, it will have been six years and four months since the original PSVR released back in 2016.
The original PSVR was released about six months after the first major consumer VR headsets—HTC Vive and Oculus Rift—hit the market back in 2016. However HTC, Oculus, and others have released many new headsets in the interim. To its credit, PSVR managed to feel competitive for many years after its release, but eventually began to feel dated as the rest of the pack charged ahead into VR’s ‘gen-2’ epoch.
Now here we are in 2023 with PSVR 2 on PS5 set to bring new life to Sony’s VR ambitions. Let’s take a look at how PSVR and PSVR 2 specs compare:
PSVR vs. PSVR 2 Specs
PSVR 2
PSVR
Resolution
2,000 x 2,040 (4.1MP) per-eye, OLED, HDR
960 x 1,080 (1.0MP) per-eye, RGB OLED
Refresh Rate
90Hz, 120Hz
90Hz, 120Hz
Lenses
Fresnel
Single element non-Fresnel
Field-of-view (claimed)
110° (diagonal presumed)
100° (diagonal presumed)
Optical Adjustments
IPD, eye-relief
Eye-relief
Connectors
USB-C (no breakout box)
USB, HDMI (breakout box)
Cable Length
4.5m
4.4m
Tracking
Inside-out (no external beacons)
Outside-in (external camera)
On-board cameras
4x IR (external), 2x IR (internal)
None
Pass-through View
Yes
No
Input
PSVR 2 Sense controllers (rechargable), DualShock 5 (rechargable) eye-tracking
It’s easy to get lost in the numbers so let’s really break down the major changes between the headsets.
Resolution, Field-of-view, & HDR
For one, PSVR 2 has about four times the pixel count of PSVR. All things being equal, that means images inside the headset would look about four times sharper, which is a substantial improvement.
However, we know that all things won’t be equal. Sony quotes the field-of-view of PSVR 2 at 110° compared to 100° for PSVR 1. That means that while PSVR 2 has many more pixels, they’ll be stretched over a slightly wider area. Overall the sharpness of the headset should still be substantially better, but not quite as much as the sheer increase in pixels would suggest.
As for the field-of-view itself, 100° to 110° isn’t a huge leap, but you’d surely notice it if you compared the headsets side-by-side.
Unless a surprise headset beats it to the punch, PSVR 2 will be the first commercially available VR headset to launch with an HDR (high-dynamic range) display. That means it’s capable of a much wider range of brightness than a typical headset. Functionally this means the headset will be able to produce scenes with more life-like brightness which in theory could improve immersion considerably.
Granted, in our PSVR 2 preview we didn’t clearly notice the headset’s HDR capabilities, though it isn’t clear if the games on display had been optimized for the feature yet. Another possibility is that the HDR mode simply may have the kind of peak brightness you’d see from an HDR TV. So at this point it’s unclear if HDR will be a ‘nice to have’ feature, or something that defines the headset compared to its contemporaries.
The original PSVR was for a long time the only major headset on the market that didn’t use Fresnel lenses, which are known to cause glare (in exchange for other benefits). PSVR 2, on the other hand, will be following the rest of the industry which has long moved to Fresnel lenses as the industry standard.
The lenses in the original PSVR had a large enough eye-box that Sony didn’t feel the need to include an IPD adjustment (which adjusts the lenses to match the distance between your eyes). However, PSVR 2 does have an IPD adjustment which is a good idea for many reasons, so we’re glad to see this addition. Meanwhile, PSVR 2 retains the eye-relief feature found on the original PSVR, which is useful for dialing in the most comfortable view and to make room for those with glasses.
Ease-of-use & Tracking
Even though this reads minimally on a spec sheet, this is a huge deal for PSVR 2—no more breakout box and no more external camera.
PSVR 1 setup diagram | image courtesy Sony
PSVR 1 ships with a large breakout box that accepts two plugs from the headset that run along a thick cable. The breakout box has to be connected to the host console by a USB cable and an HDMI cable (and also has to be plugged into the TV). And don’t forget that it needs its own power supply. That’s six… yes, six, individual plugs running into and out of the box.
Needless to say, the breakout box was a bit of a pain. Not only did it complicate the user’s A/V set up, in some cases it even created resolution and HDR issues for certain TVs; this was partly fixed with a later revision to the PSVR hardware, but even so the breakout box was a hindrance to the overall experience.
Oh and don’t forget about the camera. PSVR 1 required the PS4 camera for tracking, which meant having another peripheral plugged into your console. Not only that, but the camera was never made for VR in the first place and it suffered from poor tracking accuracy and limited coverage.
PS4 Camera | Image courtesy Sony
Sony has identified and eliminated these issues for PSVR 2. The breakout box is completely gone; the headset will plug into the PS5 with a single USB-C cable through the USB-C port conveniently placed right on the front of the PS5. That’s great news but we surely hope that little connector can hold the cable in tightly enough to not get yanked out if the cord gets tugged during intense VR sessions!
Image courtesy Sony
And the PS4 camera is gone too. Instead of using ‘outside-in’ tracking with a camera that sits on your TV, PSVR 2 has on-board cameras for ‘inside-out’ tracking. That means the cameras on the headset itself are used to track the player’s head movements. This eliminates another extra peripheral compared to PSVR 1.
But there’s a risk in Sony’s move to inside-out tracking. The quality of inside-out tracking varies greatly between headset makers. While the inside-out tracking on Quest 2, for instance, is very good, the inside-out tracking on Windows VR headsets leaves much to be desired. Only a handful of companies in the world have shown that they can deliver top-tier inside-out tracking for VR.
Granted, the bar is pretty low in this case. Tracking on PSVR 1 was arguably the worst among major headsets on the market, but it still sold very well regardless. Even if PSVR 2 has just ‘ok’ inside-out tracking, it could still be an improvement over the poor tracking of the original.
All that said, Sony tends to be pretty serious about VR, and I expect they’ll have a decent solution for inside-out tracking, if not a very good one.
John Carmack, former CTO of Oculus and key player in the VR startup’s genesis story, says Sony’s upcoming PSVR 2 headset may be see a bumpy road to adoption based on its high price and potential for scattershot geographic distribution.
Carmack seems to really like PSVR 2’s hardware from a technical standpoint, saying that the unique combination of a tethered OLED display and PS5’s ray-tracing performance could hypothetically allow for a novel VR rendering approach with extremely low latency. As a legendary programmer and the former CTO of Oculus, it’s just the sort of thing Carmack thinks about when it comes to virtual reality headsets.
And though he he lauded that unique technical potential, Carmack says he actually doesn’t expect PSVR 2 to be “very successful at $600”:
I don’t expect PSVR2 to be very successful at $600, but technically, with a directly connected OLED display and decent ray tracing performance, it is an opportunity to implement just-in-time ray tracing for couple-millisecond 6DOF motion-to-photons latency, which I would really
Releasing on February 22nd, PSVR 2 carries a price tag of $550, which after sales tax puts it somewhere close to $600 out-the-door in most states. That’s a fair jump past Quest 2’s $400/$500 price tag, depending on whether you buy the 128GB or 256GB version.
Former Oculus CTO John Carmack | Photo courtesy Meta
Still, this doesn’t take into account the all-in price to actually play PSVR 2, which at $400 for the PS5 Digital Edition and $500 for Console with disc drive, puts it somewhere north of $1,000 for everything required. But what about Sony’s impressive global reach with PS5?
In a follow-up tweet, Carmack mentions that PS5’s admittedly large global footprint, now tallying 30 million consoles worldwide, isn’t nearly as important as having a higher concentration of devices spanning a smaller geographic area.
“Addressable market size matters much more to developers than global coverage. A 5M market size distributed across every country is much less attractive than a 10M market in a smaller set of countries. In fact, equal sized markets would favor fewer countries — less work.”
Carmack doesn’t appear to be playing favorites either; he similarly critiqued Meta Quest Pro recently for its “dubious price point,” something which has skewed Meta’s latest and greatest away from consumers and positioning the mixed reality headset more as a work productivity device.
Doubts about PSVR 2 seem to be mounting the in few weeks preceding its February launch. Public perception was recently injected with a heavy measure of uncertainty about its pre-order performance. A Bloomberg report earlier this week claimed Sony had slashed production forecasts of PSVR 2 by half to just one million units expected in the first quarter, something Sony has now refuted.
Looking to learn all about PSVR 2 before it launches this month? Check out our top articles covering games, hardware previews and more:
Following a Bloomberg report which claimed Sony had cut its production forecast for PSVR 2, the company flatly refuted the claim.
Update (January 31st, 2023 – 12: 51PM PT): Sony refuted a Bloomberg report earlier today that claimed the company had cut its production forecast for PSVR 2 in lieu of lower than expected pre-orders. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, the company said it has “not cut PlayStation VR2 production numbers,” and further claimed it is “seeing enthusiasm from PlayStation fans for the upcoming launch, which includes more than 30 titles such as Gran Turismo 7, Horizon Call of the Mountain, and Resident Evil Village.”
The original article, detailing the Bloomberg report, continues below.
Original Article (January 31st, 2023 – 5: 31AM PT): Slated to launch on February 22nd, Sony was expected to produce an initial run of two million PSVR 2 headsets, however a recent Bloombergreport maintains the company has reduced those forecasts to just one million in the first quarter.
Citing people familiar with deliberations, Sony reportedly told a supply partner to expect reduced display panel orders, allegedly stating that it only expects to sell 1.5 million units between April 2023 and March 2024.
Only Aiming to Meet PSVR (2016) Unit Sales?
To put it into perspective, the original PSVR for PS4 sold two million units after about 14 months on store shelves. At the time of PSVR’s launch in October 2016, over 70 million PS4s were in the wild, making for a pretty large potential install base.
Out of the gate, PS5 unit sales were largely held back by the global manufacturing cooldown starting in 2020, so many of those console sales are probably fairly recent. At CES 2023 earlier this month, Sony said it has sold 30 million PS5 consoles to date, noting at the time that December 2022 was the biggest month ever for PS5 console sales.
Here’s a chart of PSVR unit sales spanning launch up to 2020, showing an early bump to one million sales, and a slower protracted growth period to five million units over the course of three years.
Data courtesy Sony
Although less than half as many PS5 consoles are in the wild in comparison to PS4, the VR landscape has changed a great deal over the years. Market leader Meta hasn’t released Quest 2 sales figures, however analysts suggest Meta has shipped somewhere between 10 and 15 million Quest 2 units since launch in late 2020, meaning potential interest in VR is at an all-time high.
Provided the reports are true, Sony is only hoping to essentially match its original sales figures of PSVR over the next 14 months, which may signal it has markedly lower expectations for its next-gen VR headset overall. But why? In the end, it probably comes down to the all-in price of PSVR 2 and the lack of strong anchor titles to convert PS5 owners.
Photo by Road to VR
At its cheapest, PS5 costs $500, while PSVR 2 (and included controllers) costs $550, putting the all-in price of just the hardware at $1,050. This is undoubtedly a barrier to entry for newcomers, especially since the company’s best PS5 sales period was just a month ago. Brand new PS5 owners may not be able to rationalize another large gaming expense, especially in face of a worsening economic recession.
Then there are launch titles, many of which are remastered versions of extant Quest and PC VR games. Of the 30+ PSVR 2 launch day games announced by Sony, there are really only a handful of standout anchor titles: Horizon Call of the Mountain, Gran Turismo 7, and Resident Evil Village—the last two are flatscreen games getting VR compatibly support at PSVR 2’s February 22nd launch.
Notably missing is the slew of innovative first-party, ground-up VR games like Astro Bot Rescue Mission and Blood & Truth, as well as taster packs like PSVR Worlds. The lack of heavy investment in exclusive content out of the gate may signal Sony is again forecasting long term growth similar to the original PSVR, casting it more as an optional accessory than a must-have expansion of its console gaming experience.
Granted, Sony has to think more in the long-term for its VR headsets than, say, standalone manufacturers like Meta, HTC, and Pico Interactive. Sony likely doesn’t expect to ship a prospective PlayStation 6 until 2028, recent reports contend, which means this is possibly the only PlayStation-compatible VR headset we’ll see for quite some time.
For now, at least, PSVR 2 represents class-leading hardware, but it will only be able to attract and retain users in the long-term with an increased focus on exclusive content, better bundling strategies, and a PS5 install base that will hopefully continue its path towards strong growth like we’ve seen in the recent months.
PlayStation has finally revealed its launch day (or rather “launch window”) titles for PSVR 2. Notable highlights include Demeo, Gran Turismo 7, Horizon Call of the Mountain, and Resident Evil Village, although there’s no word on when VR’s favorite block-slashing game is making the move to Sony’s next-gen VR headset.
First, here’s the list of guaranteed launch day games coming on February 22nd, 2023. Sgames are re-releasing completely, providing a paid pathway for upgrades, or coming as a free upgrade to players who already own the title for the original PSVR. We’ve put that info in bold for easier reading:
Gran Turismo 7 (via free update to PS5 version of GT7)
Horizon Call of the Mountain (Firesprite, Guerrilla)
Job Simulator (Owlchemy)
Jurassic World Aftermath (Coatsink)
Kayak VR: Mirage (Better Than Life)
Kizuna AI – Touch the Beat! (Gemdrops, Inc.)
The Last Clockwinder (Pontoco/Cyan Worlds)
The Light Brigade (Funktronic Labs, purchase includes PS VR and PS VR2 versions)
Moss 1 & 2Remaster (Polyarc)
NFL Pro Era (StatusPro, Inc., free PS VR2 upgrade)
Pavlov VR (Vankrupt)
Pistol Whip (Cloudhead, free upgrade)
Puzzling Places (Realities.io, free upgrade)
Resident Evil Village (Capcom, via free update to PS5 version of RE Village)
Rez Infinite (Enhance)
Song in the Smoke (17 Bit)
STAR WARS: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge (ILMxLab)
Synth Riders (Kluge Interactive, free upgrade)
The Tale of Onogoro (Amata K.K)
Tentacular (Devolver)
Tetris Effect: Connected (Enhance)
Thumper (Drool LLC)
Vacation Simulator (Owlchemy)
What the Bat! (Triband)
Zenith: The Last City (Ramen VR, free upgrade)
There are also a handful of “launch window” games announced, which are said to arrive “through March”:
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners: Ch. 2: Retribution (Skydance)
No Man’s Sky (Hello Games)
Creed: Rise to Glory – Championship Edition (Survios)
The Dark Pictures: Switchback (Supermassive)
Before Your Eyes (Skybound Interactive)
Curiously missing from the list is the promised Beat Saber, which again ranked as the top-downloaded game on PSVR this past year. PlayStation says in its big blogpost info dump that more games will be confirm their launch window availability up until February 22nd, so we’ll be updating this piece to reflect all of the launch content coming to PSVR 2.
It’s more than a bit disheartening to see essentially the same top PSVR game downloads repeated throughout the years, although here’s to hoping this may be the last time we utter the names Beat Saber, Job Simulator, and SUPERHOT VR in sequential order as the upcoming platform’s best-performing titles.
The original PSVR has earned a well-deserved rest after more than six years of faithful service, no doubt. But on February 22nd, the company’s next-gen headset PSVR 2 is coming to town, which has the potential to shake things up a fair bit as the PlayStation begins charting titles created for its latest and greatest VR headset.
I’m hoping to consider this a bid farewell to the same ol’ top download chart, which seems to have stayed fairly stagnant for the past couple of years. Before we go further though, here’s the top PSVR downloads in 2022:
PSVR Top Downloads – 2022
US/Canada
EU
1
Beat Saber
Beat Saber
2
Job Simulator
Job Simulator
3
SUPERHOT VR
SUPERHOT VR
4
Creed: Rise to Glory
Creed: Rise to Glory
5
Swordsman VR
Sniper Elite VR
6
Astro Bot Rescue Mission
Swordsman VR
7
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality
8
GORN
Batman: Arkham VR
9
Batman: Arkham VR
Arizona Sunshine
10
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
Astro Bot Rescue Mission
Notice anything familiar? With the exception of Sniper Elite VR, which actually released in 2021 (but critically didn’t rank among the top downloads that year), it’s nearly identical to the chart from 2021. Pretty much par for the course for the platform’s aging game library, it seems.
PSVR 2: Shifting to a More Experienced VR Gamer?
Notably, PSVR 2 doesn’t feature backwards compatibility, although many games on the chart above are either re-releasing on PSVR 2 or getting a free upgrade, so we’ll very likely see many of these titles persist in the charts for months to come.
Sony has also publicly announced a handful of PSVR 2 titles which may be strong contenders for the top spots in the coming months and years. Popular games and franchises include Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil Village, Horizon Call of the Mountain, Demeo, Crossfire: Sierra Squad, Firewall Ultra, Among Us VR,2MD: VR Football Unleashed All-Star, and Hello Neighbor: Search and Rescue just to name a few. We’re still waiting on an official list of launch day titles and a more concise understanding of what’s getting an upgrade, and what isn’t.
Granted, I said I’m hoping to consider this a bid farewell to the seemingly iron clad chart rankings, although there’s a good reason those top games performed so well on PSVR. The top three—Beat Saber, Job Simulator, and SUPERHOT VR—undoubtedly make for excellent first-time VR experiences for basically anyone. After all, PSVR was likely the first VR headset for many who already own a PS4, so a continued focus on casual VR content makes sense.
Note: Beat Saber has been confirmed for a PSVR 2 rerelease (possibly free upgrade, but Meta hasn’t said yet), while Job Simulator and SUPERHOT VR are still unconfirmed for PSVR 2.
It remains to be seen whether the ‘newcomers at the top’ paradigm plays out the same way with PSVR 2 though in the months and years to come. Many of the top games on PS5 appeal to a more mature gaming audience (in gaming ability, not age), which is reflected in the top 2022 downloads there: Call of Duty: Modern WarfareII,God of War Ragnarök, and ELDEN RING.
Photo by Road to VR
A better analogue though for PSVR 2 may be Quest 2’s performance over the years, owing to its spot as essentially the largest VR platform for consumers. Many of the top titles on the monthly Quest charts present a better mix of casual drop-in titles and more lengthy adventures such as BONELAB, Moss: Book II, and The Room VR: A Dark Matter, which may mean the PSVR 2 chart may look very different indeed.
Still, for PSVR 2 to follow the same path, there needs to be an extensive mix of premium quality content for newcomers in addition to the top games repeated from the days of yore. Players will be looking for fresh casual content like Astro Bot Rescue Mission, PlayStation VR Worlds, and Creed: Rise to Glory—the sort of games you can plop family and friends into that they immediately understand and can play—in addition to needing a steady stream of ‘AAA’ level titles like Resident Evil Village and Horizon Call of the Mountain, two of the largest standouts PSVR 2 users will probably look to for the sort of graphical quality they’re used to on flatscreen.
In the end, it’s hard to say how things will shake out. Sony appears to be playing its PSVR 2 hype strategy more or less in the same way it did with PS5, i.e. not many exclusives and a softer launch than expected. That could have to do with the fact that the all-in price for a PS5 and PSVR 2 headset is around $1,100, which not only limits the number of prospective game sales by a fair bit, but could mean less first-party investment overall if the install base isn’t large enough. Whatever the case, we’re hoping to hear more about games and get a better understanding of launch day titles over the coming month leading up to its February 22nd launch.
What’s your opinion? Will future PSVR 2 charts look the same, be dominated by new casual content, or will we see more mature titles break in? Let us know in the comments below!
No more ungainly break-out boxes to contend with; thankfully PSVR 2 connects to PlayStation 5 via a single USB-C cable. But if you think you’ll be able to plug in that seemingly standard cable to a VR-ready PC to play Half-Life: Alyx like you might with standalones such as Quest 2, Vive XR Elite or Pico 4, you’ll be sorely disappointed. PSVR 2 won’t work as a PC VR headset, and according to the developer behind unofficial conversion software iVRy Driver, you shouldn’t buy one with the anticipation that it ever will.
Plug in an original PSVR into a computer, and the PC thinks it’s an additional monitor. That was the starting point back in late 2016 for many to begin cobbling together unofficial support for PC VR games. One such go-to staple for PSVR-to-PC conversion is iVRy Driver for SteamVR, an ongoing project created by indie studio Mediator Software.
But what about PSVR 2? In a Reddit thread discussing the topic, Mediator Software says you should save your cash if you want to buy a PSVR 2 specifically for PC VR gaming:
Who would have thought one VR’s most popular games was coming to Sony’s next-gen VR headset? Probably everyone, but now the company has confirmed it is indeed bringing Beat Saber to PSVR 2.
Announced during Sony’s CES 2023 keynote, Beat Saber is said to be “in development” for PSVR 2, a game created by the Meta-owned studio Beat Games.
There’s a few more questions still in need of answering between now and PSVR 2’s February 22nd launch though—one in particular: is Meta going to offer PSVR 2 support as a free upgrade to owners of the game on PSVR? Sony is mum on the subject for now, with more information promised sometime in “the near future.”
Launched in 2018 on Rift, SteamVR, and PSVR, Beat Saber almost immediately became the medium’s most recognizable title, and it’s still chugging years later. It regularly tops PSVR’s most downloaded charts, and was even in the most recent list of top-selling VR games on Steam—a testament to its continued strength across all VR platforms.
It would make a good deal of sense that it will indeed come as a free upgrade, as Beat Saber’s revenue model is very much tied to its continuous paid DLC releases, which regularly offer up music packs from some of the world’s leading pop artists. Asking a PSVR owner to buy a base game and hundreds of dollars of DLC they already own would be a pretty dicey maneuver to say the least.
In any case, it appears Meta is sticking with its promise to make sure Beat Saber persists as VR’s premier cross-platform title, though there’s no telling whether they charged Sony a pretty penny to make it happen.
Sony has announced that the latest title in its longstanding racing franchise, Gran Turismo 7, will support PSVR 2 at launch.
This week during Sony’s CES 2023 conference, the company announced that Gran Turismo 7 will support PSVR 2 at the headset’s launch via a free upgrade for existing owners.
Not much was shared about exactly how the game’s VR compatibility will work, including whether it would support the headset’s new motion controllers or rely on the standard PS5 gamepad.
This won’t be the first Gran Turismo game with VR capabilities. GT Sport (2017) offered support for the original PSVR headset, though only partially, with players being limited to a subset of the game’s modes, with the PS4 gamepad as the only form of input.
We’re hoping that this latest iteration of the game and headset will offer more comprehensive compatibility.
On stage during the event, SIE President Jim Ryan also shared that the company has sold more than 30 million PS5 units, and also said that customers should expect to have a much easier time finding the console available for purchase “from this point forward.” That’s of course important for impending launch of PSVR 2 next month, as anyone who has been waiting to upgrade to the new headset will also need the company’s latest console.
