There are now signs that Sony is finally giving up on their VR initiative.
As reported by Android Central, their sources claim that Sony has made “deep cuts” to funding for future PlayStation VR 3 games. They paraphrased their source by stating:
“There will be very few opportunities for VR game development at Sony going forward.”
Android Central also claims that Sony only has two PSVR 2 games in development right now. But, there’s more.
Looking at circumstantial evidence, we know that Sony recently closed studios, or fired developers, for Sony owned studios that were making PSVR2 games.
Firesprite, who made Horizon Call of the Mountain, and was the subject of serious toxic workplace allegations, saw layoffs that included the creative director of Horizon Call of the Mountain.
London Studio shut down in February, at the same time that Firesprite was told they would have layoffs. London Studio made the PlayStation VR Worlds demo disc, and Blood & Truth, and were historically known for making the Singstar and Eyetoy games, as well as helping design the hardware for those games.
The lesser known First Contact Entertainment, who made Firewall Zero Hour and Firewall Ultra, is the third VR studio affected by Sony’s cuts.
Android Central also noted that the Insomniac hack perpetrated by ransomware group Rhysida revealed no PlayStation VR 2 projects in the works. We will point out here (aside from the immoral way that this information was obtained) that it is believed the hack yielded information that is at least two years old. So it may not accurately reflect Sony’s plans from last year or even two years ago.
Regardless, Android Central also noted that Team Asobi had given a poor explanation for why their upcoming PS5 title, Astro, was not being made for PSVR2 as well. Team Asobi studio head Nicolas Doucet gave this explanation:
“We’re focusing 100% on PS5. Rescue Mission was great fun to make. Every medium has its strong points. In the case of a third-person game, whether you work on TV or VR is radically different. This idea that we could add a VR mode is not applicable to this kind of game.
It’s applicable to some first-person games like racing, but not for this kind of game. So our choice was to go 100% for TV to really have as many people as possible playing this game.”
Of course, even gamers who don’t have VR headsets may know that you can play video games that were not built around VR, in VR. There is also enthusiast tech like Flat2VR and PrayDog’s Universal Unreal Engine VR Mod that can add real VR support to non-VR games with little effort.
If anything, though, this really reflects a trend that’s started before Sony. Two months ago, we reported that Apple’s mixed reality Apple Vision Pro headsets were facing low demand, and that Apple reduced shipments as a result.
It did seem for the better half of a decade that the video games industry really wanted to make VR a thing this time, since Palmer Luckey unveiled the Oculus Rift to the public and launched its immensely successful Kickstarter. After a decade, multiple entrants with their own headsets, and hundreds, possibly thousands of games, the industry may be giving up, as the economic conditions around the industry may make it unfeasible to keep going.
This isn’t a sign that everything is over, but it is definitely a step in that direction.
