PlayStation VR has had a ‘hugely positive’ response from third-party developers, according to Sony, who expects to see many different uses of its technology.
During a keynote presentation on the virtual reality headset by Simon Benson (pictured right), the director of SCE Worldwide Studios’ Immersive Technology Group, along with SCEE London Studio’s director Dave Ranyard (centre) and principal designer John Foster (left), the trio were questioned on how outside studios have taken to the tech.
According to Simon Benson, the PS VR has been “unanimously well received” by developers in a “hugely positive response”, and “people just fell in love with it”.
John Foster, who earlier guided the audience through several different PlayStation VR tech demos based around the theme of the ‘London Heist’, added:
“We hear anecdotes of quite high-level executives in these third-party companies who are a little bit skeptical initially, and then they play a [transformative] experience and it flips their view completely… You can describe it as best you can, but you won’t get anywhere close to what the person actually using it will see it to be, because it’s speaking to their senses as well as just their conscious mind.”
Meanwhile, Benson suggested that third and first-party developers may find a number of different uses for PS VR, including the ability to include virtual reality segments within an otherwise non-VR game:
“Some people will make a game specifically for VR; some people will take part of a game, maybe, that works really well and make that work with VR; and some people will take the game world and re-present it as a VR experience in another way. You can imagine, say, a first-person shooter: maybe they’ll leave the [sections] that require a lot of interaction as a D-pad thing that’s very well tuned, and maybe you’ll get into a vehicle and suddenly it’s a perfect simulation. The sensation of just putting on the headset would be like putting a helmet on; suddenly you’re in a vehicle – you’re in a helicopter, tank, whatever… You can see how those would fit into existing games as a transitions to different experiences within that title.”
For more on PlayStation VR, read what Sony had to say in response to concerns over motion sickness caused by virtual reality headsets.