Sony is getting ready to release tethered PC VR support for PSVR 2 this summer, but that may be one of the last meaningful things the company does for its increasingly latchkey VR hardware.
According to a report by Android Central‘s Nicholas Sutrich, Sony isn’t leaving any budget for first-party content.
Paraphrasing for anonymity, Sutrich’s source maintains there will be “very few opportunities for VR game development at Sony going forward.”
Citing a separate source with knowledge of Sony’s internal strategy, the report alleges only two PSVR 2 games are currently in development at Sony. The company hasn’t responded to the report at the time of this writing.
While PSVR 2 owners are still getting a number of highly-anticipated games this year, such as Skydance’s Behemoth, Alien: Rogue Incursion, Zombie Army VR and Metro Awakening to name a few, the headset has been missing out on first-party anchor content for some time now.
These require Sony’s funding and ongoing interest in VR to accomplish, something that seems to have faltered since the headset’s launch in February 2023. To boot, the list PSVR 2’s first-party content hasn’t changed in a year, which includes Horizon Call of the Mountain, Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil 4 Remake, and Gran Turismo 7.
Instead of showing off a slate of exclusive content to mark its first year anniversary back in February, Sony instead announced it was going to officially support PC VR games with the launch of an adapter box, coming in August for $60.
PC support won’t include a number of features unique to PSVR 2 though, including HDR, headset feedback, eye-tracking, adaptive triggers, and haptic feedback other than rumble.
The move comes in stark contrast to Sony’s prior strategy with the original PSVR, which pushed compelling first-party content through 2018 with the launch of critically-acclaimed platformer Astro Bot Rescue Mission. Notably, Astro Bot Rescue Mission was never updated to work with PSVR 2; meanwhile, its upcoming sequel Astro Bot is skipping VR support entirely.
Some of this no doubt comes down to cost-savings. Earlier this year Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan announced a wide-reaching layoff round affecting a number of its first-party game studios. This included the closure of Sony’s London Studio, known for VR action-adventure game Blood & Truth (2019), and reductions at Firesprite, the studio behind Horizon Call of the Mountain.