Sony's getting serious about VR on PS5, and that's great news for everyone

Sony PS5 next-gen VR controller on blue background

(Image credit: Sony)

Sony has unconcealed what will become the first purport-built VR controllers for its PlayStation consoles. PSVR was a handsome achiever back with the PlayStation 4, and Sony has secure to revamp it and rerelease a bigger, better system on PS5. But this time in that respect's a key difference: No dreadful PlayStation Move controllers.

Sad if you're a Make a motion fan; these aging lightsticks just aren't it when it comes to VR controllers. They are great for Sportsfriends, I'll admit, but VR needs something with a little more dynamism. We've had a few swings at getting that amalgamate decent over in PC VR land, in the end landing place on 2 popular designs: the Valve Indicant Controllers and the Oculus Quest 2 controllers. Both have their pros and cons.

One look at the next-gen PSVR controller, and it's clear that Sony has appropriated notice with a design not all that different to either of the two.

The side by side-gen VR controllers come with haptic feedback; adaptive triggers, which are perchance a disposed with the DualSense; finger touch espial, which we've seen get on a bit of a standard in VR controllers now; and genuine tracking that doesn't rely on visible illuminated.

This all says to me that Sony is looking to convey PSVR to the next level. That could be great news for the wider VR ecosystem, as well, every bit PSVR fleetly became one of the biggest VR systems globally when it first came out and is still heaps of users' point of entry into practical realism.

"SIE's Product, Engineering, and Design teams give collaborated to work up our new VR controller from the ground up with a goal of qualification a immense bound from ongoing-gen VR gaming," a Sony web log post reads. "We're thrilled with the controller we developed, just what matters now is how gimpy creators volition consume advantage of the features to design the next generation of VR experiences. Prototypes of our new VR controller will be in the hands of the ontogeny residential district soon, and we toilet't wait to see what ideas they come up with you bet the controller helps bring their imagination to life!"

Unfortunately, the PSVR 2 release date North Korean won't be this year, but 2022/2023 could be probable candidates considering PlayStation is willing to talk about its next-gen VR arrangement already.

Sony PS5 next-gen VR controllers — (Image credit: Sony)

As for Sony's main competitor, Microsoft has previously lordotic a toe into VR on the PC with Windows Mixed Reality, but has left its consoles exterior of the running and so far. However, it's long been rumoured to Be considering making such a move on console, and a recent screenshot from IGN Italy had farther alluded to the practical ontogenesis of an Xbox headset behind the scenes.

But Microsoft later made it clean-handed that was altogether just one big misunderstanding, telling IGN "The copy in this mistake message is inaccurate ascribable a localization glitch. VR for comfort is non a focus for us at this time."

Furthermore, backrest in 2019, yours truly wrote an article for my previous haunt, PCGamesN, quoting Phil Spencer saying "no one's asking for VR" on Xbox.

Microsoft may feel like information technology's missing a trick in VR with its latest consoles eventually, just for now information technology seems happy going away without. At to the lowest degree on Xbox, anyways, the company is surprisingly active in AR evolution elsewhere.

Jacob earned his first byline committal to writing for his own tech blog from his hometown in Cambri in 2017. From there, he proportional to professionally breaking things at PCGamesN, where he would later come through command of the kit closet as hardware editor. Nowadays, as higher-ranking hardware editor at PC Gamer, He spends his days coverage along the latest developments in the technology and play industry. When he's not writing about GPUs and CPUs, you'll find him trying to get as removed away from the modern world as possible by wild bivouacking.