The opening of my Horizon Call of the Mountain demo for PlayStation VR 2 was a genuine “Welcome… to Jurassic Park” moment. It caught me by surprise because, honestly, I’ve cooled off on VR quite significantly. For a while, VR was all anyone could talk about–an exciting evolutionary step for gaming. But its momentum dissipated, and its ubiquity took it from being the conversation to just part of a conversation, and a relatively small one at that. Between Valve’s Index, HTC’s Vive, and Oculus’ lightweight, cordless Quest 2, VR not only became a reality, but an affordable and convenient one.
All this is to say that, in a relatively short period of time, VR went from an exciting future to an ordinary present and, in many ways, lost its luster in the process. Now, VR headsets are just another entertainment device vying for your time, attention, and money. But what hasn’t changed is the potential that made VR so exciting in the first place, which largely remains unfulfilled. So, the task now becomes doing it better and hoping that small steps of iteration can be as meaningful in realizing that potential as the giant leaps of innovation that created it.
Iteration is very much the name of the game when it comes to PSVR 2. It’s a piece of hardware that uses Sony’s own learnings, as well as what it has seen competitors do, to inch the technology forward. It features better displays, utilizes more powerful hardware, and improves the overall user experience. And that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enough to experience a game with a level of intimacy that’s not possible when holding a controller and sitting a few feet away from a screen. With PSVR 2, Sony’s goal seems to be to push that sense of immersion much deeper.