In Theory: Does PS4 offer VR its best chance at success?

[Administrator]

The battle lines are drawn. 2016 is the year in which the big players of the virtual reality space - HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR - finally make a move on a compelling but still uncertain market. A lot is at stake for each to make a great first impression to buyers; from the quality of the games being shown, to the hardware being used, and in particular the notion of using a headset at all. Of all three contenders though, it's Sony that is perhaps best placed to bring virtual reality to genuine mainstream success.
A big factor in this is pricing. Oculus has already shown its hand recently at £500, which will buy you the headset, sensor and remote, plus an Xbox One pad and two games. HTC's technically more ambitious Vive is more expensive still at £689. However, for each approach this isn't the end of the expenditure, and to make any use of these headsets you'll also need a PC with decent specs - where a GTX 970 paired with an i5-4590 CPU is Oculus' recommendation. It's a fine fit for existing PC enthusiasts, but as a barrier for entry for those coming in fresh, these two components alone currently chew up another £400 of your budget. Add in the necessary power supply, motherboard and RAM, and it's a much taller bill than many will be willing to pay.
Sony's PlayStation VR has several big advantages, then. A PS4 is of course far cheaper than a PC of this spec - a £270 unit with an already wide install base that offers a standardised level of power developers can target when optimising VR games. Meanwhile, Sony states the cost of its own VR kit will be "akin to a new gaming platform", suggesting it veers closer to PS4's original £350 launch price rather than its £500+ competitors. Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to pricing technology: we shouldn't expect a hardware design as advanced or refined as the competitors'. But we've seen it and used it, and the sense of immersion is there. It has the wow factor, and the balance between price and hardware is better tuned towards a mainstream audience.
Read more…


More...