As one of the few PlayStation VR games to have been ported over from a roomscale HTC Vive experience, Sports Bar VR (known as Pool Nation VR on PC) does a great job of showing developers it can be done. Now it’s showing them how to support their games post-launch too.
Developers Cherry Pop Games and Perilous Orbit today released a free update to the social sports title, adding three new games to it. Chess, Checkers and Shuffleboard all join the PlayStation Move-supported experience, adding to the list of things players can do when they meet up with friends online or challenge AI opponents. There are also more toys to mess around with in the environment, including a ping pong ball gun, a beach ball, baseball, and American football.
You can’t actually play American football — the sport doesn’t take well to bars and places with lots of glass — but you can still throw them between friends.
Opponent AI has also been upgraded, “to make the game more enjoyable.” I’ve played against the computer pre-patch and it can beat you around a little bit on the pool table. Interestingly the update doesn’t support Sony’s PlayStation 4 Pro, which hits next week and gives developers the chance to improve the visuals and performance in PS VR titles. We’ve reached out to Cherry Pop to see if it might add support for the console in the future.
I really liked the developer’s port of Pool Nation for PS VR. “If you have a Vive then Pool Nation is easily still the better way to go, but PS VR owners shouldn’t feel short changed by the console edition,” I said when we compared the two versions. “If all developers show this kind of attention to porting their room-scale projects to the less capable headset, then PS VR has got a very bright future ahead of it.”
With free updates like this, that’s truer than ever.
