Project Morpheus has been re-christened PlayStation VR, and represents a bold move by the console platform to establish new paradigm in home gaming. But how much can you expect to pay for that new paradigm? Sony Entertainment’s CEO Andrew House seems has some hints.
First unveiled at GDC 2014 after months of rumours, Sony’s Project Morpheus was still somewhat of a delightful surprise. Many believed virtual reality was the exclusive purview of the powerful PC gaming space, with consoles grunt seen as too weak to power the next generation of gaming platforms.
Sony subsequently not only proved naysayers wrong, the PlayStation 4 certainly can power compelling VR experiences, they’ve also produced some of the best VR experiences yet to be shown on any platform.
PlayStation VR represents years of R&D within Sony and cutting-edge hardware to boot, this was never going to be a super-cheap, gimmicky peripheral – in fact it’s not really a peripheral at all. So, realistically, expectations for pricing should always have erred on the side of costly.
Now, an interview with Sony Entertainment’s CEO Andrew House, reveals we may need to steel ourselves for laying down similar money to the price of the PS4 itself. This puts the US price at around $400 based on the 2013 launch price of the PS4 and £349 in the UK.
It’s likely that Sony will adopt the well worn console tactic of breaking even on hardware, making money from software and licensing – but PlayStation VR’s pricing has to be extremely attractive to tempt people to make the jump to VR. Although Sony plan to have 10 PlayStation games available for launch, which should help.
We’ll see how realistic these estimations are come Q2 2016, when PlayStation VR is set for launch.