14 DAY TRIAL // Sony has recently announced that its long-time Project Morpheus VR headset is to be renamed PlayStation VR in a bid to get the project development to a closure, and finally start preparing it for sales.
It’s clear that the recent move from Sony is meant to start bringing the VR headset to developers and get it ready to support a couple of titles dedicated to the Sony console. Apparently, Sony wants the new device to hit the market in late 2016, accompanied by a set of games.
According to an interview given to Bloomberg, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House considers that the entry cost for the hardware would be about $800 (€707) as a new gaming platform, and is expected to drop to $300 (€265) during its lifespan. The reason the first-generation VR headsets won’t be affordable is that it uses a lot of custom and expensive hardware, so ultimately, Sony will sell the headset at the price of a PlayStation 4.
Mr. House Sony prepares the headset to launch at the Tokyo Game Show and will include 10 playable demos of games that will be compatible with the PlayStation VR, like Machine Combat League, a first-person robot shooter, and Square Enix Holdings Co.’s Final Fantasy XIV.
Sony makes its VR headset an exclusive peripheral
Although there are no known specs of the new Sony VR headset, apparently, its built-in display offers a resolution comparable to that of a high-definition TV and a 100-degree field of view, slightly more than the normal human range. It seems that the pre-production HMDs that Sony has been demonstrating to public for a while feature a 5.7” OLED panel with 1920*1080 (960*1080 per eye) resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and 100-degrees field of view.
We find it curious that Sony doesn’t want to drop the price for its VR headset below the norm, since it’s clear that an eventual popularization of the device is not the company’s immediate interest. Although Mr. House says that Sony plans to bundle low-cost VR headsets together with smartphones, it doesn’t seem to want to invest more money in current-generation consoles VR headsets since the tech might not be mature enough at this stage.