PlayStation dismisses VR quality concerns and explains Neo absence

Every demo of PlayStation VR has been conducted on an everyday PS4, Sony confirms.

The platform holder has dismissed concerns that the PS4 is not capable of running a high quality VR experience, and that the Neo – Sony’s upcoming improved PS4 system – would be needed to run VR at a decent level.

Speaking of which, global head of marketing and sales Jim Ryan has explained why Neo wasn’t at Sony’s E3 press conference. He said the company has a ‘pure story’ to tell about software, and wanted to take its time to announce Neo correctly.

We had such a strong and, I’d say, pure story about games,” he said. You are not alone in making the comment – and I think it is a legitimate comment – about only just getting going on the games side of things on PS4. I think that needed to be addressed and by focusing exclusively on the games last night, hopefully we have laid that to bogey to rest.

We did disclose some high level principles in that FT piece for the thing we call codename Neo. In terms of the very public articulation of it on a stage, we really want to be ready and be able to demonstrate it properly and all of that. So we will do that when we are ready, when we can show it properly.”

Yet when it came to PSVR concerns, Ryan tells gamers and critics to play the headset for themselves and make up their own minds.

Go to our room and check out the VR games and make up your own mind,” he told us at E3. That’s for you and others to decide upon. We are completely confident that the line-up of 50 games – plus some of which was announced yesterday, which was serious in terms of heavyweight IP – that those games are going to provide a first class VR experience. What we can say is that we have a fertile ground of 40m PS4s, all of which will run PlayStation VR.”