We wouldn’t blame you for being excited to see the reveal of Astro’s Playroom and Resident Evil 8: Village for PS5, but so far there’s no indication that these games will support PSVR even though their predecessors did.

Sony must have known that it would make our hearts skip a beat when revealing two new games for PS5 yesterday that previously had very successful VR versions. Unfortunately there’s been no definitive statements on whether or not the games will support PSVR.

While the games haven’t been confirmed for VR, Sony has confirmed that PS5 will support the current PSVR headset (and it’s expected to launch a PSVR 2 in the future).

Astro’s Playroom

Image courtesy PlayStation

Astro’s Playroom is the followup to ASTRO BOT Rescue Mission, one of PSVR’s most acclaimed games, which closed out 2018 as the 7th best rated PS4 game that year (among all games, not just VR games) according to review aggregator Metacritic.

So it goes without saying that PSVR fans would love to see more of Astro in VR.

Unfortunately, as far as we know so far, the newly revealed Astro’s Playroom won’t support PSVR. From what’s shown in the trailer, the game appears to be a showcase for the PS5 DualSense controller and its newfangled haptics.

The original Astro Bot Rescue Mission was made exclusively for VR and played with a gamepad; so there’s nothing about the game being gamepad-based game that would exclude it from supporting VR. However, the trailer footage that we have so far appears to show a few things that you wouldn’t want to do in a VR game, like quickly rotating the player while Astro goes down a slide.

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Granted, the game could conceivably have a special camera mode which would make it suitable for use with PSVR, but there’s reason to believe that PlayStation’s Japan Studio wouldn’t want to make a game that attempts work with both VR and non-VR. The studio said as much in our deep dive article with Astro Bot Rescue Mission’s Creative Director and Producer, Nicolas Doucet, who explained that the studio decided to drop the game’s non-VR co-op component so that it could focus all of its efforts on VR mechanics.

Some levels [in Astro Bot] initially allowed three extra players to join on the TV. It was fun to play together but we soon realized that in order to make the [non-VR] TV gameplay work, we were limiting the amplitude of the levels too much, thus hurting the ‘VR-ness’ we were after. Removing the multiplayer and focusing on a solo game allowed the game designers to be much more daring and efficient with the use of VR in their levels and the final game would have not been possible had we kept this multiplayer mode.

But who knows… with the critical success of Astro Bot Rescue Mission, perhaps Sony gave the green light for a larger production which includes enough developer resources to do both? We’d certainly be thrilled to hear that Astro’s Playroom will support PSVR, but so far there’s simply no evidence for it.

Resident Evil 8: Village

Image courtesy PlayStation

If you ask PSVR enthusiasts what the best games are, you’re almost sure to hear someone recommend Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Although it wasn’t designed for VR from the ground-up, the game’s creepy, claustrophobic, and atmospheric horror is taken to new levels in its optional VR mode (which allows players to go through the game start to finish with PSVR and gamepad).

So you can understand why fans would be hoping that the newly revealed Resident Evil 8: Village would also include optional PSVR support on PS5. But, alas, there’s no confirmation so far.

At a minimum, there seems to be clear evidence that adding a VR mode to Resident Evil 8 would be a smart decision. Developer Capcom’s own stats tell us that some 1.25 million PSVR players have played Resident Evil 7, which makes it possibly the most popular VR game on any single platform.

While we can’t account for how many players bought the game because of its VR support (as opposed to those who would have bought it anyway and then decided to try it with their headset), Resident Evil 7 potentially earned some $50 million dollars in additional sales revenue thanks to the VR mode.

So it seems like it wouldn’t be a bad idea to add a PSVR mode to Resident Evil 8 as well, but so far there’s no confirmation.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Lucidfeuer

    God was this conference a let-down, I might have to bet on the Xbox as best-selling for the first time ever.

    • Yen

      I don’t think so. People that won’t buy PS5 will buy a PC instead and not a XBOX. Because with PC they have the same games that with XBOX and VR.

      • Lucidfeuer

        Yes that’s one factor to take into account, but I also think more generally that there will be a par between the two console like for the 7th generation.

  • Greyl

    Even if it doesn’t have VR, there’s always VorpX.

    • Marian

      Are you serious? VorpX is for PC only. And still,the only thing that
      VorpX enables is the 3D view. You still have to use mouse+keyboard or gamepad and it is no way as immersive as native VR experience with motion controllers.

      • Greyl

        And? Didn’t RE7 only use GamePad for PSVR; there was no motion controls?

        Point is, RE8 is coming to PC; VorpX allowed RE7 to be played in VR on PC and the experience came very close, if not as good, to playing it in PSVR. There’s plenty of YouTube videos of people playing RE7 on PC through VorpX if you don’t believe me.

        • Charles

          I’ve spent many hours trying to get games to work well with VorpX. None of them turned out acceptably. Not worth the effort.

          • Greyl

            It depends on the game, and on your hardware; some games work much better than others. For me, Vorpx is one of the best VR products any PCVR owner should buy. You’ve provided no examples of what went wrong for you, so I don’t know if you’re lying or what.

          • gothicvillas

            Is RE7 and good with Vorpx?

          • Greyl

            Well, I think it’s awesome, but if you don’t believe me, just watch some YouTube videos of others playing RE7 with VorpX and see for yourself.

          • gothicvillas

            I beat the game on psvr and would love to have a go on my pc too. Is it like a big screen in front of you?

          • Charles

            It wasn’t a performance issue – the way it worked was a bad VR experience. For example, on Portal 2, the scale was wrong, the stereo vision didn’t feel right and was uncomfortable (or was flat, depending on the setting), and most significantly, I couldn’t get the HMD turning to sync up properly with in-game camera turning. It had some kind of “mouse acceleration” effect I couldn’t get rid of, where the angle the view turns depends on how fast you turn – turn 45 degrees quickly and you end up looking 180 degrees behind you. Very disorienting and immersion-breaking.

            Another example: Witcher 3. It wouldn’t allow for true first-person view – only overhead third-person view. Yet, even this view didn’t work naturally – you turn your head and instead of viewing the scene naturally it would rotate the view around your in-game character. Very disorienting and immersion-breaking.

            This was a couple years ago – not sure if they’ve made any major improvements in these issues, but I doubt it.

          • antonio mora

            Yeah, vorpx is trash.

          • Greyl

            Weird, I played entirely through Portal 2 last year on VorpX and thought it was amazing. Maybe they did update it since you last tried it. The developer regularly updates it, so yeah, you may have just been using an old build, and some of those problems have since been fixed. With Witcher 3, you might need the 1st person mod, but generally, you should mostly stick to 1st person games. I’m currently playing through Alien Isolation right now, and it’s fantastic and way more immersive than playing in 2D.

          • Charles

            Interesting, maybe I’ll give it another try. Were there any special setup tricks you had to do with Portal 2 to make it work completely right? You didn’t have the “mouse acceleration” HMD rotation issue?

    • namekuseijin

      that’s pathetic beyond belief

  • namekuseijin

    if these games and all FPS and racing games are not playable on current psvr at the launch of PS5, I’m dumping them after 25 years and getting a pc+Oculus

    future of games my ass

    • silvaring

      They said it was backwards compatible bud.

      • namekuseijin

        backwards compatible to play current psvr games. No word on PS5 games in VR.

        • Lucidfeuer

          PSVR2 is probably not until next/2 years, the problem is that despite the huge initial success of the PSVR, they completely dropped the ball and refused to do the necessary iteration especially since the PSVR is too weak in specs, so I doubt the PSVR2 will be anything to wait for, more so in the light of the very weak PS5 value-proposition.

  • I WANT TO PLAY RESIDENT EVIL 8

  • martin

    it’ll be in VR, just wait for the official announcement

  • blue5peed

    “The Playroom” was always a collection of flat mini games used to demonstrate the PlayStation’s controller features, that is where the Astro Boy mascot came from. They have just re-branded “The Playroom” to “Astro’s playroom”. It is not necessarily a follow-up to the VR platform game.

    • benz145

      You’re definitely right. Astro become more of a specific character in Astro Bot Rescue Mission whereas before it was underdeveloped. Astro’s Playroom uses the same character, but might be using it for a different purpose. Still, Sony and PlayStation Japan Studio obviously knows how much ABRM was loved by VR players, and I’m certain they knew the character’s connotation.

  • Rupert Jung

    Astrobot without VR is like Mario in a wheelchair. Just makes me sad.

  • impurekind

    I feel like these two games really should have had/shown VR support as a major feature imo.