Sony has announced a PC adapter for PlayStationVR 2 that will allow the console headset to work on PC, albeit with a few missing features like eye-tracking, adaptive triggers, haptic feedback, and HDR. Otherwise, you’ll be able to plug it in and play with it like you would any other headset for the platform. Players have been waiting a long time for this support, but it also feels like a death knell for the ill-fated peripheral.
Ever since it was first unveiled, the PSVR 2 has felt like a strange beast. Not only did it have a lacking selection of launch titles, with few exclusives and lots of old ports, the future was also looking bleak with little developer support and a price tag that was doing very little to attract casual consumers. Even for hardcore players like me, lacking backward compatibility was the first and final nail in the coffin. I spent hundreds on titles that would look and feel so much better to play on an improved headset, but had no choice but to start from scratch.
Horizon: Call of the Mountain was a great launch title and a beautifully immersive gem from Firesprite, but being able to experience a new tale in this gorgeous world wasn’t enough to turn the tide, and neither was yet another Until Dawn rail shooter. Put aside all the ports and post-launch support for games like Resident Evil 4, and you’re left with an awfully tight line-up, and according to a new report from Android Central, there’s little more on the way.
Sources at Android Central claim that only two major PSVR 2 titles are being worked on at this moment in time, while Sony is also actively scaling back this department to double down on other ventures following the lukewarm reception to its virtual reality successor. But in my eyes, it didn’t do enough to support developers or give them the resources required to make this into a product worth owning. You were expecting consumers to pay more than the price of the PS5 itself for a peripheral with no backward compatibility, few standout games, and a fading promise of future support. How and why it failed is hardly surprising to me.
Releasing a PC adapter also feels like passively admitting defeat, as if Sony is putting its hands up and handing the reins over to third-party developers and indie creators to take the headset to new heights, since it certainly has no interest in doing so.
It's a crying shame as the original PlayStationVR was easily the most accessible headset of its kind until the Meta Quest came along. It was affordable, had a decent variety of games, and housed a number of visually inferior yet still impressive ports from PC.
Astro Bot: Rescue Mission debuted on the headset too, a platformer so good that fans are now begging for a port to PS5, so it isn’t trapped on an old headset for all eternity. Yes, you had to plug in a load of wires to get the damn thing to work properly and dig out archaic PS Move controllers to play certain games, but it still felt like a tantalising taste of the future.
It could have been different though if Sony was willing to embrace the past as much as the future, and give existing headset owners a reason to pick up the new model and not feel like every single penny they spent on the previous generation was a complete waste. That’s how I felt, and judging by the sales numbers, I’m not alone.
Horizon wasn’t enough to make most of us drop over five hundred dollars on a headset with few prospects, and now we’ve already been proven right. If Android Central’s report holds any water, we can expect a couple of tiny reveals in the coming months before support for the headset dries up entirely.
More than a year has passed since PSVR 2 launched, and it has lost all momentum, rarely coming up in State of Play presentations because Sony has to show something for the damn thing, or it will only fade from memory even faster. Now reports are surfacing of its awful fortunes and Sony’s scarce plans for the future. It should just put us out of our misery already.
Next: Sly Cooper On PS5 Feels Like An Imperfect Time Capsule
