Sony to Make PSVR2 Pads Usable on Apple Vision Pro, New Report Claims

Great news! Because why wasting development capacities to e.g. make PSVR2 backwards compatible to play PSVR1 games?

I just hope that Sony VR games will get ported to PC eventually. Everything is better at higher frame rate and resolution.

@Max_the_German To be fair that would require hiring people to almost completely remake old games made for different tech. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. Especially considering how people are already complaining that their output has diminished. Everything costs time and money.

Making the controllers available as a separate purchase really should be a priority for Sony with or without Apple Vision compatibility. It’s mad that if you break a controller outside of warranty you essentially have a £500 brick on your hands.

So you can buy both? I imagine the market of people who buy a $3000+ system AND PSVR2 is teeny.

PlayStation literally going multiplatform.

No doubt they will be eventually releasing PlayStation games on the Apple VR, this is the only way PlayStation can complete again MetaQuest platforms.

@JustCameHereToSay Porting games nowadays is very easy. Even if the game doesn't sell a million copies day1 they will make a profit eventually. PS consoles keep releasing, but Steam has been the same since day1. People will be buying games from there in 20 years.

Great news, especially if the pads are finally sold separately, absolutely crazy they aren’t already. I don’t really have much interest myself in Apple vision, but can see the appeal, so anything that helps boost PSVR2 is a good thing!

Really happy to see the love for PSVR2 growing the past few months. I got mine not really knowing what to expect and genuinely curious to try VR, and having so much fun with it, in some cases it’s like learning to play video games again, which isn’t a feeling you get too often. So if this opens the door to other people having that same experience, then even better.

I love the design of the PSVR2, and the controllers are pretty great; but the headset is physically painful to wear! Even with the Globular Cluster mod (which unfortunately doesn't change the facial interface). I wish Sony put more effort here, rather than supporting third party devices.

@FutilityInExcellence I think it could be possible to calculate the input values for the PSVR1 API with the output values of the PSVR2 subsystem, so that PSVR1 games could run natively on PSVR2. These API developers should be the ones who are now working on the Apple integration, and that is also not for free!

@Max_the_German There are way too many games to play already. Can't just do the bare minimum and expect people to care. You need to make a good product and market it correctly over months and release it when there isn't too much competition.

@Max_the_German

Its not as simple as that. While the PSVR and PSVR2 headsets seem similar since they are both VR headsets with some sort of camera based tracking, at the hardware level they are as different as PS5 controller and a HOTAS. The raw input (which is what most games will be reading, rather than some high level VR API) will be incredibly difficult and unlikely to work in most cases.

That's not even mentioning the custom in-game calibration tools in many games that directly use the camera and its raw input.

To be clear, I am not excusing Sony, these problems were solved with convergent high level APIs on the PC before the PSVR existed, so they should have designed it better so that a remapping could easily be done; but I do not think they did, and don't think its possible for them to do so at a system level.

I feel bad for anyone that bought a psvr2 hoping that it would be well supported and receive decent first party support. Definitely seems like a step backwards from psvr1 in terms of software.

I returned my psvr2 preorder within a few days of getting it due to extreme motion sickness when trying to play. Luckily I was still able to get a full refund, I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet.

I don’t think the vr technology is anywhere close to going mainstream and as such I doubt we’ll be getting a psvr3 anytime soon. Most companies in the VR hardware space are starting to pivot towards AR - a space that ensures motion sickness is minimised. Meta headsets now have full colour pass through and apple vision is also focused on this feature.

VR continues to be a niche product and Sony’s huge success with their ps5 hardware does nothing to encourage playstation to divert investments from the core part of their business to vr.

Hopefully this means Sony will start selling them separately. Always a bit concerning if you walk them into something.

@Neither_scene Don't worry too much for us. I bought it day 1 and, though there haven't been any exclusives other than Horizon, the games available on it are awesome. It's well supported thanks to 3rd parties. Even people like myself who suffer from motion sickness find tons of game that don't cause any.

@naruball glad you’ve managed to find some value. I bought it for the promise of first party games and the production values that Sony had bought to games like god of war, horizon, uncharted and the last of us. Call of the mountain was the realisation that motion sickness would prevent me from enjoying such games.

But since call of the mountain, there hasn’t been any other games of that calibre - plenty of indie experiences, but that’s not why I bought the headset. Motion sickness ironically saved me from this disappointment. If I were to pick up vr again, the meta quest 3 seems to be a far better value proposition as I now have a vr capable pc. There’s considerably more high end pc vr games than available on psvr2 and more indie experiences including a lot of psvr1 games not playable on psvr2. Meta, for the time being, are continuing to support the quest with exclusive titles in addition to all the third party titles being made for the system.

@koffing This is probably more likely to benefit the next gen of the Vision Pro, more so the current gen…. So hopefully not a $3k HMD.

@koffing I mean they would let you buy the controllers separately if this goes through of course.

@Neither_scene yeah, for sure, that was the right move for you. Hope, if you get a meta quest 3, you greatly enjoy it. VR is awesome when it works well.

@Victor_Meldrew I’ve not seen that, could you provide a source? I know that Vision Pro isn’t selling iPhone numbers, but I don’t think that was the intent. I thought it was apple’s first foray into AR to test the waters and was aimed as much at developers as it was early adopters. Similar to ps5 pro, trialing things that can be improved upon and developed into the next mass market iteration.

I’d be interested to see how deep this partnership goes. Sony doesn’t view Apple as a direct competitor. They allowed the port of games like Flower, Journey and even Death Stranding on iOS whilst under Sony publishing licence for example.

As Sony happily release PlayStation games on agnostic devices like the PC and we know have iOS devices capable of playing PS4 titles I wonder if we will see games like Horizon or Spider-Man on Apple devices?

@Victor_Meldrew for any other company that would be a pretty significant loss. For apple, I’m sure they’ll write off the costs as RnD used to inform future products.

The technology isn’t where it needs to be and at $3.5k it was never going to shift many units. The future is definitely AR, the problem at the minute is condensing the tech into conventional glasses or contact lenses and delivering it at an affordable price. Apple want to be there when that tech becomes reality and Apple Vision Pro has laid the groundwork for that future. I don’t think they’d call it a failure in that respect and I’m sure they’ll continue to iterate on Vision Pro behind the scenes.

This sounds like a very good idea 💡 🤔

I know at my local Walmart they have some of the VR sets for the ps4 stored away in the back from taking to the employees there. Likely the VR2 sets will join them at some point. Sony is likely trying to move the unsold units that are sitting in retail stores.