PSVR 1 games won’t work immediately on PSVR 2

Why is it important: Sony’s upcoming PSVR 2 has been widely publicized and has captured the attention of many tech enthusiasts, promising outstanding features and performance for headsets, controllers, and even games. Unfortunately, Sony has announced that games released for the first PSVR headset will not “natively” work with PSVR 2.

In 2016, Sony launched its first product in the virtual reality world with PSVR, hoping to generate the same amount of interest and excitement as rivals such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Sony stepped in and undercut the competition in terms of price by releasing the PSVR at $399, compared to $599 and $799 for the Rift and Vive, respectively. Of course, PSVR required a PS4, which raised the price almost to the level of the Vive if you didn’t have one at the time.

Sony’s PSVR has been a relative success, with around 5 million headsets sold by 2022, according to Sony. In 2016, VR was still a very “niche” hobby for several reasons. Nowadays, virtual reality seems to have taken its place in the mass market.

Competitors such as Meta’s Quest 2 have been remarkably successful, with Meta claiming 15 million sales. Sony certainly wants to capitalize on this “virtual reality boom” by officially announcing PSVR 2 at CES 2022. Specifications are a massive improvement over PSVR 1, to say the least.

When PSVR 2 releases in early 2023, early adopters may find it difficult to find games that can take full advantage of PSVR 2’s features. You’d think players would be able to download some of their favorite games from the PSVR library. Imagine playing Beat Saber at the resolution that PSVR 2 can output, or live out your dream of being a chef in Job Simulator or any of the over 600 PSVR games.

Unfortunately, Sony has confirmed that PSVR 1 games will not “natively” run on PSVR 2. PlayStation podcast interviewHideaki Nishino, Senior Vice President of Platform for PSVR 2, states that the headset’s numerous features make it incompatible with PSVR 1 games. These features include haptic and adaptive triggers, headset and controller tracking, 3D audio, and 4K HDR resolution.

It’s worth noting that developers can update their PSVR 1 games to work with PSVR 2 if they choose to. It seems rather odd that this is an issue, but unfortunately PSVR 2 users will have to deal with it. While it’s nice that developers can update their games to work with PSVR 2, it’s unlikely that every PSVR 1 game will get this “next-gen update”.

Let’s hope Sony can make it easy for developers to port their games to next generation hardware. Thus, the first users of PSVR 2 will be able to choose from a variety of games.