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After its first year on the market PS VR stands at something of a crossroads as we approach the key retail quarter. Today at Paris Games Week it showcased a raft of titles for the device, undoubtedly to get the platform moving before the key sales season – waiting for PlayStation Experience in December would be too late for that.
On stage at the Paris event Jim Ryan, head of global sales and marketing said: "As PlayStation VR marks it first year in the market it’s really moving to see how development teams are starting to see the raw power of this game changing technology. We’re witnessing the birth of new styles of gaming, storytelling and visceral experiences. "The future of PlayStation VR is extremely bright," he emphasised.
Sony announced back in June that it’s sold more than 1m headsets, though that figure wasn’t much up on the 915,000 units that it announced to The Times in February. However, stock of the headset was limited then, and with no such problems as we approach the end of the year, Sony will need to grow that install base significantly if it wants developers to create more complex and expensive titles for the platform.
"We’re witnessing the birth of new styles of gaming, storytelling and visceral experiences"
To that end, it had a huge number of VR titles on show in Paris, both in the pre-event stream and once the main event began. The biggest potentially was Blood and Truth – which takes the London Heist and ‘dials it up to 11’ according to the developers.
Also shown though were a far wider range of titles than we’d seen in one place before. Ace Combat 7 and Ultrawings showed two very different sides of the flight experience, with the latter channelling Pilotwings with a variety of craft and challenges.
Moss looks as great as ever and is now confirmed to be coming to the platform in February. While Apex Construct is a first person action game built purely for VR, more on that from VR Focus here. Both look to push the graphical refinement of such titles way beyond early titles.
Bow to Blood is an airship arena combat game, like Black Flag, in the sky where you can shoot with guns to hand and control your ship with controls in front of you. While League of War: VR Arena is a virtual tabletop wargame, which might lend itself to AR as well as VR.
Stifled looks to be tense experience, a survival horror where you can only see through soundwaves, like a really rubbish Daredevil. While FPS racer Sprint Vector is the very opposite, being a riot of colour and movement, but hopefully not to stomach churning despite that.
No one seems sure what Star Child is yet, guesses on a postcard to the usual address, while Transference from Ubisoft has been seen and demoed before and is a great take on the horror genre, but without all the usual monster tropes. Plus there’s new content for Resident Evil 7 too, Smash Hit: Plunder, Dead Hungry, Eden Tomorrow and Monster of the Deep Final Fantasy XV.
You can watch most of that here:
With all that available in the coming months, some release dates weren’t shown admittedly. No one can accuse of Sony leaving PS VR out in the rain, if mass market consumers really want VR, and that’s yet to be proven, then Sony is putting on a strong show to try and attract them.
