If you buy the PS5 versions of Hitman 3 or No Man’s Sky in the coming months, you won’t have access to either game’s PSVR support found in their PS4 versions, as the company has not announced PSVR games on PS5.
On the subject of Hitman 3, a Sony spokesperson told UploadVR via email that you’ll need the PS4 version of Hitman 3 to play it in VR since the PSVR operates as a backward compatible device. The representative then went on to clarify, “We have not announced PS5 titles for PS VR.”
No New PSVR Games On PS5
This follows months of speculation around how PS5 might embrace PSVR when it launches in mid-November. We’ve always known that the new console would support the headset for backwards compatible PS4 titles. But many had hoped new PS5 games could integrate VR, taking advantage of the console’s improved horsepower while continuing to use the same HMD.
But those hopes have quickly eroded. For starters, Sony confirmed PS4-era controllers like the DualShock 4 and the Aim controller couldn’t support PS5 games, which called into question how potential VR games on PS5 would track controllers. Then, when Hitman 3 announced full support for PSVR earlier this year, developer IO Interactive said it was “working to finalize the specifics for how PS VR owners can enjoy Hitman in VR.” At the time neither the studio nor Sony would confirm if this meant the PS5 version wouldn’t support PSVR.
Finally, earlier this week, Hello Games announced No Man’s Sky’s next-generation PS5 native version, adding that, on PlayStation, PSVR support was available “by virtue of backwards compatibility”. Until today, that was the most direct confirmation we’d have on the matter.
What This Means For Now
So, if you’re getting a PS5 in the next few weeks and are excited to try PSVR on the console, you’ll want to make sure you buy the PS4 versions of PSVR-supported games if you want to try them on the headset. If you buy the PS5 versions you won’t find the PSVR support listed.
Fortunately, both Hitman 3 and No Man’s Sky do have free upgrade plans; anyone that owns No Man’s Sky will get to upgrade to next-gen consoles for free and gets to take their save data over, too. You have to buy Hitman 3 on PS4 digitally to qualify for a free PS5 upgrade, meanwhile – you can’t upgrade from the physical edition. That doesn’t guarantee the reverse, however. In other words, cross-generation save features should mean you could install both versions of the game on PS5, access the PS4 version when you want VR and the PS5 version when you want to play flat-screen, and then share your progress between the two, but we haven’t tried this for ourselves. What’s not clear, however, is if IO Interactive and Hello Games might offer free downgrades to PS4 for anyone that wants to play on PSVR. According to PlayStation, that’s a developer-by-developer decision.
Don’t forget you’ll also need the official camera adaptor for PSVR to use the headset on PS5, too. You can’t use Sony’s new PS5 Camera, you have to use the PS4-era camera. Sony is sending the adaptor out for free to PSVR owners, though.
What This Means For The Future
This news comes shortly after Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan’s comments about the future of VR to The Washington Post. “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,” Ryan said. “Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. But will it come at some stage? We believe that.”
These comments make it seem like we won’t be seeing a true PSVR 2 that supports PS5 games directly until 2022 at the very earliest. But there’s plenty to suggest another headset will happen; from R&D talks to research videos and job listings and more. Until then, however, it seems like PSVR owners will have to make do with old PS4 games, though there should still be new VR releases on that console in 2021, at least.
What do you make of the PSVR games on PS5 news? Let us know in the comments below!
Senior Editor David Jagneaux also contributed to this story.
