Finally, PS5 showed a remarkable card.
On January 5, 2022, the first day of CES 2022, Sony officially announced the next generation of VR devices for the PlayStation 5 platform:
PSVR2。
Although the various gossip news that has been flowing out before this has been knocking on the side to imply that "Sony has not given up the VR cause", in the face of the official announcement in black and white, the shocking taste is obviously not the same - not to mention, compared with the original product, the detailed parameters currently announced by PSVR2 are indeed not lacking in highlights worthy of attention:
According to the news of the official PlayStation blog, as a new generation vr device for PS5 players, the known parameter performance of PSVR2 is as follows -
OLED display, monocular resolution 2000×2040, refresh rate 90/120Hz;
Front field of view of about 110°, support eye tracking and fixation rendering;
Using Inside-Out tracking and positioning function, including a six-axis motion sensing system, connected to the host through USB Type-C cable;
With the PlayStation VR2 Sense somatosensory controller, the built-in haptic feedback function.
If the PSVR five years ago was just a test of Sony's initial exploration of the virtual reality industry, then it is obvious that five years later, today's PSVR2, the posture presented is "ending the test of the official end" - then, how many chances can the makeover PSVR2 bring to Sony?
That's what we're going to talk about today.
PSVR: Wonderful but far from a perfect start
To truly understand the product value of the PSVR2, first of all, it is necessary to review Sony's VR console strategy, PSVR.
To summarize the PSVR announced in 2016 in the simplest adjective, there is nothing but "perfunctory".
Even by the standards of 2016, compared with the many competing devices that appeared in the "FIRST YEAR OF VR", the comprehensive quality of PSVR's hardware is undoubtedly poor - whether it is the picture effect, wearing experience or operation feel, objectively speaking, there are not many commendable highlights:
The first is the picture. In the early days of the product announcement, Sony slyly declared that "the resolution of the display unit is 1920×1080 pixels", and it was not long before the player recognized the monocular resolution of only 960×1080 - although at first glance it seems to be similar to the monocular resolution of Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, which competed in the same period, 1080 × 1200, but if you add the wearing effect of Debuff, the actual experience can only be described as "unsightly";
The second is the wearing experience. Although the headband wearing structure with pressure on the forehead is used, which effectively reduces the pressure exerted by the PSVR device on the user's face, the airtight and non-sweat-absorbing rubber eye mask makes all the efforts to "optimize the wearing experience" in vain: even if it is only sitting and playing, no more than half an hour, the steaming sweat around the eye socket is enough to make the vision become blurred, and even the highest resolution is white - this is only the result of the sitting experience, if replaced by a somatosensory action game, the deterioration effect will be doubled;
Finally, and most critically, and criticized by both developers and players, the PSVR's standard somatosensory control device is really sloppy - in fact, as early as the product announcement, seeing that Sony actually chose to release the PlayStation Move in 2010 as the somatosensory controller of the PSVR, many players who knew the goods had realized that the situation was not good; subsequently, the PlayStation, which was bundled with the PSVR suite and used as a spatial positioning component, was sold Camera, but also to make the situation worse - losing tracking positioning drift is a common thing, for developers, how to use the overstretched refresh rate to complete accurate tracking, is a real challenge:
"It's hard to imagine how much sacrifice it would take to achieve transplantation!"
This is a testimonial from a friend of mine who is a VR game developer after Beat Saber successfully logged into PSVR.
However, despite no bright spots in terms of hardware, as the vr device that finally debuted in the "first year of VR" in 2016, PSVR still achieved market success that far exceeded expectations - well, why did Sony win again?
The answer is simple:
Game content.
From the success of PSVR, look at the key to the success of VR games
If the hardware performance of a game-specific device is not outstanding, then the easiest way to get the recognition of the market and players is to make more efforts in software content.
Just look at how well this "content wins" product strategy works in the gaming space, just look at Nintendo. It turns out that the successful experience of the nemesis can also be applied to its own product development strategy - just look at the most acclaimed games on PSVR, anyone can understand that Sony really did not learn from Nintendo this time.
In terms of IP lineup alone, PSVR's list of games does have no shortage of eye-catching headlines that make people stop - the most superficial example is undoubtedly the critically acclaimed Resident Evil 7:
As the innovation of the second transformation of the classic series of "Resident Evil", the official introduction of the first-person perspective has indeed attracted a lot of criticism, but as long as the PSVR is worn, a considerable number of players will feel that this change is worth the money: through the panoramic perspective of immersive exploration, the sense of fear of walking alone is indeed the long-lost taste of "Resident Evil" players; with this kind of dilemma experience, vertigo and poor resolution seem to be no longer a problem - Thinking about whether taking a step forward will not jump out of the zombie scare, a little bit of physical discomfort, obviously not enough to hang teeth.
Through innovative content experiences to make up for the shortcomings of hardware performance, the success of Resident Evil 7 has objectively presented the potential of VR as a carrier for new game development; but on the other hand, keen players should also be able to notice that although the unprecedented sense of immersion makes players accustomed to peering into the game world through TV screens refreshing, at least for PSVR, the most popular control devices are basically PS4 controllers rather than PS Move - Resident Evil 7 naturally does not need to say more Cosmic Robots: Search and Rescue Operations produced by First Party Studios is no exception.
In the final analysis, in order to reduce costs and ensure sales, the compromises and concessions made by PSVR in hardware design have indeed had a non-negligible impact on the player's gaming experience: the reason why after the initial novelty faded, a large number of PS4 players have shelved the PSVR and turned their heads to continue to look forward to the AAA masterpiece in the traditional mode, the reason is very simple - even if the eyes become a panoramic view, the actual operation interaction is still holding the handle and the joystick and buttons, "window viewing" The experience doesn't change in nature, does it?
But on the other hand, although the shortcomings of somatosensory operations directly lead to the high and low heat of PSVR, there are indeed outstanding developers who have successfully developed VR games that do not require somatosensory interaction devices and can still be fascinating based on immersive visual experiences alone - the masterpiece in this regard is undoubtedly Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Tetris Effect:
If you experience this work through the traditional TV mode, then, in addition to the "almost indiscriminate light and shadow effect", I am afraid there will not be much more profound impression; but if you switch to VR mode, the experience will immediately rise to a new level:
When the displayed interface is freed from the shackles of the border, and the illusory wave of light and image fills the field of vision, accompanied by the slight vibration feedback from each press of the control button, every square fall and even the elimination of each row of blocks presented to us will be fused with the BGM that haunts our ears, converging into a set of breathing and pulsation as if within reach of the overall structure - this successful sensory experience that penetrates the visual, auditory and tactile senses is the core selling point of Tetris Effect. synesthesia.
As a VR game, the most direct value of "Tetris Effect" is to fully prove to us that even if the interactive operating system is not changed at all, just relying on the improvement of visual effects is enough to make the most traditional classic games have a remarkable evolution in the VR environment - but in all fairness, from the perspective of the high and low response of "Tetris Effect", this VR game that transcends the "realistic" realm is still a long way to come to Japan if it wants to be officially accepted by the market and players.
For Sony, if you really want to make a difference in the VR game industry, PSVR alone is absolutely impossible to perform crotch- PSVR, and only by redesigning the next generation of VR devices from the underlying hardware can we live up to the expectations of VR game developers who trust Sony - and this is undoubtedly the real mission of PSVR 2.
How does PSVR2 win?
After five years, the market pattern of VR games has turned upside down.
HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, which once made the most of the limelight in the "first year of VR", have long since ceased to be their former glory – the former's industry status has been completely replaced by Valve's own Index, and the latter has been taken over by its own cheap Oculus Quest 2; as the entire industry has turned from hot to cold, the ambition to "completely disrupt the game industry pattern" seems to have weathered over time. So, how many chances can PSVR 2, which chooses to re-enter at this point in time, have?
The answer seems more optimistic than expected.
On the one hand, the hot sale of Oculus Quest 2 not only effectively maintains the heat of the VR market, but also attracts countless melon-eating masses who hold coins and wait to see the official downhill, through their own actual experience, proving that the entry threshold of VR products is not as high as imagined - whether it is the "VR vertigo" that once made people artificially discolored, or the "VR high cost theory" that once became the consensus of public opinion and even the media, all of which are priced at Oculus, which is less than 300 US dollars Quest 2 is a complete breach.
Although the Oculus Quest 2 is far from being a "perfect" product from a product design point of view, the device's continued sales popularity that still shows no signs of withering away has fully proved the vitality of VR technology – yes, although we have heard too many questions and slanders in the past five years, it is still too early to conclude that "VR is dead".
On the other hand, in another route that is in the opposite direction of the Oculus Quest 2 product, valve index has also achieved impressive results:
The high price of $999 has undoubtedly dissuaded most of the mild players who have not stopped, but for those fans who have always believed that Valve is destined to change the game industry, the Knuckles controller that can accurately track the movements of both hands and fingers perfectly rewards their expectations of "touching the unreal world", and the "Half-Life: Alex" produced by the first party of the V Society is a perfect proof of how surprising it will be to hand over VR technology to first-class developers - this work is far from a gold content." Best VR Game of the Year" can be summed up, and there is no doubt that TGA owes it a COTY trophy.
In the final analysis, although there is still a long way to go from the real industry ecological maturity, today, the value potential of VR technology in the field of games has long been fully proved through more than one product; therefore, for Sony, if you want to get the PS5 out of the dilemma of "traditional masterpiece follow-up fatigue" as soon as possible, the VR fertile soil that has not yet been officially reclaimed obviously has a strategic value that far exceeds expectations - as for the layout of the PSVR2, it is actually not difficult to predict:
On the one hand, the outdated PS Move has long been proved difficult to become a big tool in the market, so in the PSVR2's set of contents list, there will be a newly designed somatosensory controller such as the PSVR2 Sense Controller - according to sony's official blog post, in addition to the most basic attitude sensing and spatial positioning function, the PSVR2 Sense Controller's built-in capacitive sensor can also capture and feedback the player's finger movements. As for whether it can reach the level of the Valve Index Knuckles controller, it will naturally be known after the release;
On the other hand, unlike the exterior-In tracking and positioning scheme built by the original PSVR using the PlayStation Camera, PSVR2 adopts a relatively more mainstream interior-Out new spatial positioning model - so that not only the original VR games of PSVR2, but also the somatosensory VR games that have gradually become popular after 2018, can be regarded as finding a new platform worth stepping on; not only that, Compared to the Oculus Quest 2, which places too much emphasis on equipment costs and has compromised too much in terms of performance, and the Valve Index, which places too much emphasis on the core experience so that cost control is completely out of control, as long as it can be balanced in terms of price/performance like the original PSVR, PSVR2 is fully capable of attracting console players with limited budget but interested in trying it out.
Finally, since it is a game platform developed by mature console manufacturers, since the previous generation of products has made a successful example, as long as it maintains normal operation, the game lineup of PSVR2 is destined not to disappoint: the first-party VR native game "Horizon Call of the Mountain" announced at the same time naturally does not need to be mentioned, and "Resident Evil 8", which revealed the rumor of "including VR mode" in the publicity stage, is also worth looking forward to; in addition, the folk mod makers have proved that The reset version of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 does support VR somatosensory operations, at least at the engine level – given CAPCOM's consistent style, it's hard not to believe that this is a backhand left from the start, and it's even more intriguing when it's officially launched.
In summary, the appearance of PSVR2 can basically be regarded as the inevitable success of the water, but the significance of this product to Sony, VR technology and even the game industry is probably higher than we expected - the next generation of console platforms and VR games in the end where to go, Sony still holds how many cards related to the success or failure of PSVR2, let's wait and see.