While buzz is huge, there’s no telling how big VR gaming is really going to get. While both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive bring seriously powerful platforms, their high price and sophisticated PC requirements do place a significant hurdle in front of potential customers. That hurdle is what many believe leaves the door wide open for the Playstation VR, Sony’s VR platform designed to work with the current-gen PS4 console.
That’s right, instead of requiring a high-end gaming PC costing somewhere in the four figures, you simply use the VR headset with any existing PS4, Playstation Move, and Playstation Camera ensemble. No graphics card upgrade, additional RAM, or any other costly change necessary – as long as you have all the base hardware components, you just kick back and enjoy the new VR experience.
The Playstation VR uses a 5.7-inch OLED display, which shows content in 1080p at 120 fps and a 100-degree field of view. As with modern VR headsets, it can adjust the visuals in sync with your head movements, complete with 3D audio so you can experience sounds coming from precise directions. Instead of using head-tracking sensors, Sony’s VR system tracks nine LEDs around the headset using the Playstation Camera to determine your head movements the same way it tracks hand motions via the Move motion controller.
In what’s perhaps its biggest advantage over competing headsets, Sony has announced that over 230 developers, including big players like Ubisoft and 2K, are currently building content for the platform. As many as 50 games are expected to be available for the platform from launch until the end of the year, with more coming in 2017.
Slated to debut in October, the Playstation VR is priced at $399.