All the opportunities Sony is losing with PSVR2. Why is now more attractive for PC than for PS5?

All the opportunities Sony is losing with PSVR2. Why is now more attractive for PC than for PS5?

So far, the PSVR2 headset has been mostly poorly received. But sales of PSVR2 have exploded this week, surpassing those from all the previous months since its debut. What happened?

One of the reasons, in part, is thanks to (another) aggressive sale, but this is not the first time a PlayStation 5 user could get advantage of a sale to get the device. The real reason is the new PC compatibility. Why are people buying now the headset for using with a PC instead of for using it with a PS5?

We have to take in account that the most advanced features of the headset are lost in PC; no eye-tracking, no HDR images, no adaptive triggers… it’s a much better device when using it with a PS5 game system. Which makes this situation more ironic and apparently illogic. So, why is more attractive for using with a PC than with a PS5? Let’s see…

Still, without the exclusive PS5 features, PSVR2 is a good device compared to other PCVR headsets. It is OLED, and even without the HDR, it means it will look much better than any other VR display even if it would bring HDR (if there would exist any presently). And that still does not explain why is not a success on the system on which was designed and on which you can make the most of it.

The real reason is there are numerous limitations on the content that we will explain in this article.

We are showing you a list of things that Sony is not doing well, and the opportunities they are losing; ordered by a relation of obviousness and how much attractiveness would gain the device for using it with a PS5 instead of a PC:

• 3D Blu-ray support: this is the most evident missing feature, and also the most unexplainable; the first PSVR came with 3D Blu-ray support. In fact, it shouldn’t be launched to the market without this basic feature. There’s no any excuse or any reason to not allow it, people expected this basic feature they had in PS4.
• Sony Pictures movie catalog in 3D: Another feature with little effort from Sony to increase the catalog of content for PSVR2. Sony Pictures has a good catalog of 3D movies, including great 3D blockbusters like Spiderman sagas. Sony also rents movies on PlayStation, so… Why don’t sell/rent their existing 3D catalog? Vudu App (now Fandango), is already offering 3D movies on PlayStation consoles since the PlayStation 3. Apple brings numerous 3D movies on its Vision Pro.
  It’s unexplainable how studios have the 3D content but don’t take advantage of it. In the case of Sony Pictures, they sell the VR headset capable of watching their 3D movies impressively, with a stunning HDR OLED display, but don’t take advantage of it. They would also be able to rent & sell 3D movies for the brand-new modern 3D DLP projectors capable of playing them, and existing 3DTV users actually demanding for years to watch more 3D movies.
• Original PSVR games compatibility: You can’t play games from the first PSVR headset, there are excellent AAA titles, they have the best VR catalog with famous and high production level titles. But if you want to enjoy them, you have to stick with PS4 and the outdated PSVR headset.
• Develop some AAA games for VR: They didn’t do much effort or invest to bring good games for their own device. They only expected to major third-party studios do most of the work. They could develop games not exclusively for VR so they can be played in 2d, that would improve the return on investment and will make more users to buy the headset. Resident Evil games are good examples of top games with VR support, they can afford fewer sales from VR users by offering also a traditional experience. Some of them even offer the possibility of a mixed experience by using the VR headset for playing in Stereoscopic 3D with a controller, instead of forcing the user to stand up for a full VR environment. This drives us to the next two points…
• Make PlayStation 3 Stereoscopic 3D games playable in PSVR2: the games are already done, there were a lot (Sony developed many at the time, but there are also many more from third-party developers), and they will look quite impressive in an OLED VR headset. They only need to emulate the games for showing on the PSVR2 headset, in a virtual giant 3D display. The player community even found a way to do it so on the original PSVR.
• Make 3D remasters of PS3 Stereoscopic 3D games: if they are too tight to make a little effort to make PS3 games playable in 3D in the PSVR2, they could do one thing they like. They like a lot. Remasters. Lots of remasters. They could sell again old PS3 games by making a remaster for PSVR2. They will sell more games and headsets, and regular users will also buy them for playing in 2d. In fact, they already remastered some PS3 games, but only for playing in 2d without thinking about other potential devices like their PSVR2.
• Make some regular PS5 games available to play in S3D: The same way the PlayStation 3 console rendered two views for 3DTVs, the PS5 could make the same for some PS5 games, so a lot of high-budget AAA games could be enjoyed in 3D in their top-notch HDR OLED VR display (or DLP 3D projectors).

Most of the possibilities on the above list are available on PC, including playing AAA regular flat games in 3D and in some case even in full VR. There are also PS3 emulators to play not only PS3 3D games in 3D, but also games not developed for Stereoscopic 3D. Of course, on PC you can watch 3D movies and 3D pictures, like the PS3 and PS4/PSVR were able to. And apps like Bigscreen and VRChat let PC users watch 3D content with their friends virtually together.

As a result, even if there are not many note-worthy games available for PCVR, like there are on the PS5 –not thanks to Sony-, PC users can unlock plenty of possibilities to enjoy 3D & immersive content.

To end, on the hardware side, there’s no much more to improve this excellent headset. Adding a wireless accessory would help, and a later revision of the headset using Pancake lenses would make it the best pure VR headset on the market (even more considering their price).

As you can see, using it with a PC, you lose the most advanced features of the headset, but then you can unlock much more use-cases and 3D & VR content.

There are too many unexplainable missing features and possibilities on PS5. And many reasons and some easy-to-do efforts to make the headset more attractive for PS5 users than it is for PC users.

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