The PlayStation VR 2 headset launched in February 2023 and, in the roughly 16 months since, it’s been on the market, Sony has put out barely any first-party games for it. And whenever the topic of VR has come up during a State of Play, it’s mostly been to announce third-party games. It’s easy to assume that Sony has already given up on supporting the headset and, according to a new report, it sounds like that’s precisely what’s happened.
The report comes from Android Central, whose anonymous sources allege Sony is cutting funding for VR game development, with only two such projects currently in development. No exact details about the games were shared, but if this is accurate, it speaks volumes to how little faith Sony has in the headset’s future. This could also mean Sony won’t develop any further VR hardware.
PSVR 2 owners can rely on third-party developers for new games, such as Alien: Rogue Incursion and Metro Awakening, but I have to imagine anyone who spent $550 on the headset at launch must be feeling burnt by the distinct lack of exclusives. Aside from launch title Horizon Call of the Mountain and the VR mode for Gran Turismo 7, the only other Sony published VR title was Firewall Ultra from First Contact Entertainment, and that studio was sadly shut down just five months later.
In December 2023, Sony had admitted the VR space was “a challenging category,” but assured the PSVR 2 was selling well. However, a Bloomberg report from this past March claimed Sony was struggling to push its backlog of stock, prompting it to put production on hold. Combined with Sony shutting down its PlayStation London studio a month earlier, which was focused on creating more VR titles, and the writing has clearly been on the wall for a while. At this rate, it’s questionable whether those two in-development VR games may even see the light of day.
