LOWERING SUPPORT FOR PSVR
It’s an unlikely scenario for Sony to just drop all support for the PSVR, but we’re at an age where technological trends can change overnight and the interest in VR could very well vanish in an instant.
The PSVR itself has had a good run, solid figures suggest there’s plenty of maintained interest thanks to some high-quality releases, Bethesda’s Skyrim VR and GT Sport among them. Skyrim itself was proof positive that a fully fleshed out game could be effective in the virtual world, more so than the shorter experiences that have largely dominated the release schedule. A system that’s comparatively more affordable to a higher cost PC and an HTC Vive/Oculus Rift kit means more people have their hands (or in this case, their eyes) on Sony’s service, and that’s a good thing not only for Sony but for VR in general.
Then again, Sony has been known to cut ties with previous hardware launches as soon as they become unfeasible. Hardware such as the original PSP and PSVita both slipped silently away in the West while various other hardware releases like the original PS Move, the Wonderbook and PlayTV failed to reach an audience (though the Move controllers have since been reconfigured for VR). There’s a precedence there that Sony could just as easily drop its VR support as soon as hardware or software sales slip backwards, either through consumer fatigue or a lack of quality.
Cutting back funding now could also be detrimental not only to its continued potential but to any second generation version at some point in the future. With an HTC Vive Pro out in the wild, the technology is only going to get more convincing in its portrayal of the worlds we can only imagine, and Sony’s current position affords them the chance to deliver that kind of experience to a broader audience that the competition hasn’t quite tapped into just yet. Unless Augmented Reality breaks through in 2018 in a big way or the currently solid sales numbers begin to fall, it’s unlikely to suggest that PSVR will be going anywhere other than up anytime soon.
