In an interview with The Washington Post’s gaming vertical, Launcher, Sony Interactive Entertainment / PlayStation President and CEO Jim Ryan said in an interview published today that he does not believe VR will be a “meaningful component of interactive entertainment” for some time still. According to him,”the future of VR” won’t arrive until after next year. This potentially means no new PSVR 2 headset until at least 2022.
The Future of PlayStation VR
The interview is all about immersion and how the PS5 hits your senses more directly by using 3D audio and the DualSense controller’s impressive haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. As explained in my editorial this week, the controller is extremely impressive and bodes well for the future of VR haptics and interaction — that is, assuming it’s ever used for VR gaming in the first place.
In the aforementioned interview, Jim Ryan seems rather unconvinced on the promise of VR despite PSVR selling over 5 million headsets:
“I think we’re more than a few minutes from the future of VR,” Ryan said. “PlayStation believes in VR. Sony believes in VR, and we definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment. Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. But will it come at some stage? We believe that. And we’re very pleased with all the experience that we’ve gained with PlayStation VR, and we look forwarding to seeing where that takes us in the future.”
To be clear though, Ryan is not saying that there are no plans for a PSVR 2 or that they’re giving up on VR. If that were the case they wouldn’t have funded a AAA-budget scale Iron Man VR platform exclusive project this year and wouldn’t be releasing an adapter to continue PSVR access on PS5 — even if the PSVR is aging very quickly.
Read More: Everything We Know About PSVR 2 So Far
They seem to be playing the long game here and will likely release a new device when it’s ready to make a significant leap forward, likely in late 2022 if I had to make a prediction.
We’ve heard from developers that they’re confident in the prospect of a PSVR 2, Sony’s job listings allude to a future device, and their own internal R&D teams have given talks about the future of display technology. Not to mention the multiples times they’ve explained that a new headset announcement won’t happen near PS5’s launch. They’re likely aiming to just clear the air and let the PS5 breath on its own first, just like they did with the PS4.
What do you think of Ryan’s quotes here? Should PSVR fans be concerned? Let us know down in the comments below!
