PSVR2 - out now!

[Alex W.]

17 hours ago, PaB said:

 

its obviously not going to fly off the shelves but I think it’s priced accordingly and there is room for it to drop in 2024 when things return to some form of normality 

That’s a thought actually, silicon isn’t expected to drop in price generationally any more (ie there can be a slim PS5 or a cheap PS5 but the cost of making smaller chips is now too big to get both at once). Maybe high-end accessories like VR and fancy controllers are the new way of ensuring you have something that can trickle down in price over the generation, because those components still see steady price drops over time?

[footle]

39 minutes ago, BubbleFish said:

Watched the game trailers and pretty underwhelmed. I appreciate it’s just the initial crop but other than the possible Horizon game, I’m not seeing anything that doesn’t look like it could have ran on the old system albeit with a resolution bump.

 

Well yes - because everything will be ported from Quest.

But don't underestimate the value of having decent controllers in each hand relative to the move.

[LaveDisco]

These high prices suck for us, but the human cost underneath is far worse. Whilst China continues its zero covid policy, this disruption will continue. And until they buy, and use western vaccines, or make progress with theirs I don’t see a way out for them. 

[Darwock]

Anybody got an idea how this is supposed to work for people in Japan (or any other country outside of the ones listed)?

 

There’s nothing at all on the website 😕

[Stanley]

Strong PS Vita vibes m with this one, better tech, controls, screen, unsupported. 

[PaB]

1 hour ago, BubbleFish said:

Watched the game trailers and pretty underwhelmed. I appreciate it’s just the initial crop but other than the possible Horizon game, I’m not seeing anything that doesn’t look like it could have ran on the old system albeit with a resolution bump.

The eye tracking would struggle on PSVR…

 

I think, well actually we all know ,this is a massive leap over PSVR. 
 

1 hour ago, Stanley said:

I can understand them wanting to offer a more high end hand held experience with fully formed games, that can also be played on the big screen,

and they clearly had a market for it with WiiU, so why oh why would you alienate all those customers who are already invested by not offering backwards compatibility? It should have been up there as one of if not the most important selling point. 
 

Can you imagine now if the Switch wasn’t backwards compatible with WiiU? Madness. 

Sometimes , especially in early development, you have cut the cord to allow your ground up product to not be hampered.

 

psvr was a solution shoe horned into old technology - eye toy camera and move controllers . And it was amazing they actually adapted it. But it should not be considered for one second for a subsequent product .

 

Now I don’t know how hard it is for bc between psvr and psvr2 given the different technologies and features. But I’m guessing it’s not straight forward, otherwise they would have done it.
I think we will see updates to existing titles if it’s not a big job to translate to the new platform. 

 

I would much rather psvr2 be set free of any constraints introduced with bc, especially as this is a first to second gen transition; not a 4th to 5th. 

 

[Thor]

11 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Strong PS Vita vibes m with this one, better tech, controls, screen, unsupported. 

Based on?

[Thor]

Also, I've seen a few people wondering if Resi 8 will be adapted for VR. It was announced back in June! There's even a fucking trailer:

 

[Stanley]

5 minutes ago, Thor said:

Based on?

Apart from a handful of first party games all anyone played were indie games and whatever they got free with PS Plus, I know I did. Then it got dropped and Sony exited the handheld business. 

[Thor]

1 minute ago, Stanley said:

Apart from a handful of first party games all anyone played were indie games and whatever they got free with PS Plus, I know I did. Then it got dropped and Sony exited the handheld business. 

So, nothing related to PSVR2 then. That's a real false equivalence there. 

[Stanley]

12 minutes ago, Thor said:

So, nothing related to PSVR2 then. That's a real false equivalence there. 

Well as the cost of development increases due to better hardware, so Sony spreads its resources more thinly in trying to support two higher end systems. I believe this is why PS Vita failed, and of course competition from Nintendo, and even they’re now realising the cost of supporting more than one platform, hence the Switch. 
 

I just don’t believe that up against Meta Sony will succeed beyond a very niche audience and therefore won’t spend the budget on games for it. 

[Qazimod]

It won't truly flop until GiantBomb do a playtest video where they haven't calibrated it properly and deem it an unplayable mess.  

[Thor]

5 minutes ago, Stanley said:

I just don’t believe that up against Meta Sony will succeed beyond a very niche audience and therefore won’t spend the budget in games for it. 

The same Meta who's latest VR gear costs £1500?  If you already have a PS5 then PSVR2 is a steal in comparison. 

[Stanley]

1 minute ago, Thor said:

The same Meta who's latest VR gear costs £1500?  If you already have a PS5 then PSVR2 is a steal in comparison. 

That’s mainly for development use, obviously you know this. 

[AI]

Didn't Sony say some time ago that all first party games will work on PSVR2? Did they just mean 2D cinema mode like PSVR?

[Thor]

6 minutes ago, Stanley said:

That’s mainly for development use, obviously you know this. 

No, it's for VR use, development, gaming, whatever, and it costs £1500. Now, Meta may well release a Quest 3, but there's no sign of that right now. So why bring them into this?

[Stanley]

11 minutes ago, Thor said:

No, it's for VR use, development, gaming, whatever, and it costs £1500. Now, Meta may well release a Quest 3, but there's no sign of that right now. So why bring them into this?

Because they are a competitor? I mean it’s fairly obvious I would have thought but never mind. 

[Indy @ S.E.]

Haven't had or used VR much so far besides those rubbish cardboard things that you slide your phone into so pretty hyped to get this and try it out.

[RubberJohnny]

I think the problem is none of the games they’re showing off look particularly evolved, they’re all the same on rails shooting galleries or on rails passive experiences where you marvel at the scale and things being close to you they had in 2016 - tech demos, in short.

 

Instead of delivering on the hope that these would evolve into fully fledged exclusive games for VR that explore the medium and are worth buying a headset for, we’ve basically just got sequels that still seem like the same limited tech demo format, seven years later and quite a bit more expensive.
 

It feels like it’s basically given up on the whole pitch that it’s a transformative thing for games, instead settling for “this’ll do, yeah?” Nah.

[dizogg]

Yeah agree, to spend £500+ it’s got to have multiple amazing games released for it. The problem is it’s kind of a cache 22 as the market isn’t huge for it, so it’s a huge risk for any publisher to make a bespoke AAA VR game, and because of this VR will remain niche because there’s nothing must buy.

[Thor]

28 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Because they are a competitor? I mean it’s fairly obvious I would have thought but never mind. 

But they're only a competitor superficially right now. Fact is the Quest 2 is lower resolution than PSVR2, and wildly underpowered unless you hook it up to a PC costing £1500ish. The Meta Quest Pro is also lower resolution than PSVR 2, and also underpowered compared to the PSVR2. So whatever Meta cooks up for Quest 3 is not likely to compete with PSVR2 in terms of visually fidelity and performance. 

 

The only point I'll concede on this is the Quest has a good solid library of games. We don't know what that's going to be like for PSVR2 long term, but with the likes of Capcom bringing full AAA releases like Resi VIII to the platform it's too soon to write this off. 

 

Finally, I'm still holding out some hope that the PSVR2 will be compatible with PC. We'll have to wait and see on that one. 

[Darwock]

There have been plenty of full games in VR though?

 

If you think it’s all just tech demos and spectator experiences you can’t have been looking very hard.

[Stanley]

17 minutes ago, Thor said:

But they're only a competitor superficially right now. Fact is the Quest 2 is lower resolution than PSVR2, and wildly underpowered unless you hook it up to a PC costing £1500ish. The Meta Quest Pro is also lower resolution than PSVR 2, and also underpowered compared to the PSVR2. So whatever Meta cooks up for Quest 3 is not likely to compete with PSVR2 in terms of visually fidelity and performance. 

 

The only point I'll concede on this is the Quest has a good solid library of games. We don't know what that's going to be like for PSVR2 long term, but with the likes of Capcom bringing full AAA releases like Resi VIII to the platform it's too soon to write this off. 

 

Finally, I'm still holding out some hope that the PSVR2 will be compatible with PC. We'll have to wait and see on that one. 

It’s all academic unless they can translate it into sales. Does it matter than Series X is way more powerful than Switch? Sales aren’t superficial and they absolutely occupy the same space. 

[Eighthours]

I still haven't had an email (have looked in spam and promotions, etc.). Sad times!

[superfunk]

Has anyone who registered yesterday (as opposed to the people who expressed interest months ago) received an invite yet?

[Shimmyhill]

5 hours ago, Paulando said:

You’d happily pay £530 + £70 for another Crash Bandicoot VR?

 

Nope, I wouldn’t pay £1 for another Crash Bandicoot but I’d happily spend some serious money on a sequel to a game that is the only one in the past couple of decades to get close to 3D Mario quality…

[dave7g]

1 hour ago, Darwock said:

There have been plenty of full games in VR though?

 

If you think it’s all just tech demos and spectator experiences you can’t have been looking very hard.

200 hours in Skyrim VR. 

[sofasurfer]

25 minutes ago, superfunk said:

Has anyone who registered yesterday (as opposed to the people who expressed interest months ago) received an invite yet?

Nothing for me as of this morning, not that I keep on checking or anything.

[thesnwmn]

1 hour ago, RubberJohnny said:

I think the problem is none of the games they’re showing off look particularly evolved, they’re all the same on rails shooting galleries or on rails passive experiences where you marvel at the scale and things being close to you they had in 2016 - tech demos, in short.

 

Instead of delivering on the hope that these would evolve into fully fledged games but in VR, we’ve basically just got sequels that still seem like the same limited tech demo format, seven years later and quite a bit more expensive.
 

It feels like it’s basically given up on the whole pitch that it’s a transformative thing for games, instead settling for “this’ll do, yeah?” Nah.

 

I still think VR has this concern over how many "active" games does the average player want? The on rails and reasonably stationary experiences reflect the reality I think which is that not only do you need the money to want this, but you might need space, and the energy/dedication to put it on, etc. The limit isn't so much the technology but the desire.

 

VR experiences are stunning. They can be transformative. But most of the time I don't want that level of physical investment personally. The result is that most VR games have to try to sort of reign in their scope. Make it so that you can be a bit more sedate in how you play them.

 

These are great but they're a hard sell to consumers and the commitment to do more for a developer/publisher is simply that the audience doesn't exist.

[Corranga]

55 minutes ago, Thor said:

But they're only a competitor superficially right now. Fact is the Quest 2 is lower resolution than PSVR2, and wildly underpowered unless you hook it up to a PC costing £1500ish. The Meta Quest Pro is also lower resolution than PSVR 2, and also underpowered compared to the PSVR2. So whatever Meta cooks up for Quest 3 is not likely to compete with PSVR2 in terms of visually fidelity and performance. 

 

The only point I'll concede on this is the Quest has a good solid library of games. We don't know what that's going to be like for PSVR2 long term, but with the likes of Capcom bringing full AAA releases like Resi VIII to the platform it's too soon to write this off. 

 

Finally, I'm still holding out some hope that the PSVR2 will be compatible with PC. We'll have to wait and see on that one. 

 

This seems like a pretty aged argument to me as you're definition of 'competing' seems to be stuck in like-for-like mode.

 

Video games are about fun, and a console is only as good as it's exclusive titles, but those exclusive titles need to be worth it.

 

VR is an incredible experience, but having used both PSVR and Quest (1 & 2), I can say that the revolutionary aspect is the lack of tether with the Quest, not the higher res as it means the way you play games can change.  

 

With the higher price point, and the almost inevitable early games consisting of a huge bunch of Quest ports running at higher res, it'll be difficult for Sony to push this I think.

Like any other console add on, be it the Mega CD, 32X, Kinect, PSVR, and even the relatively cheap by comparison specific peripherals like Eyetoy, guncons, Wii fit boards, racing wheels... the market is firstly limited by the number of console owners and then the device itself. There is always going to be an element of failure in that, it's already running up hill before it's even launched, and from a consumer perspective, looking at shinier versions of stuff I can already play on Quest, but now with a cable isn't all that interesting to me.  So we're back to the exclusives.

 

So, I'm going to go all crazy here and add in other competitors, as I see video gaming platforms as competing, not for similar experiences, but for our time and our money.

 

We're starting with £530, plus a £480 for a PS5... If you're still sitting in last gen, which at this point, most people are, that's an upgrade to a Quest, a Series-S and a Switch, and some room left for games.  That's a lot of exclusive content for your money, and I think because of this cost, PSVR2 is going to be stuck as something you consider when you already own, or want a PS5 rather than a system seller, and for that reason alone, it's set to do no better than PSVR did, and will likely be stuck in the expensive curio bracket.