Sony’s already looking far into the future of VR with the news that they’re thinking of a Playstation VR 2 system, when the first VR headset hasn’t even been released yet, or even had its release date and price put out.
While it’s possible that Sony will unveil the Playstation VR to the GDC crowd later this month, the company is apparently already hard at work thinking about its next version, at least according to Richard Marks, the director of Playstation Magic Lab.
“We are doing everything and programming everything, then we know how to do VR PlayStation 2 and make sure that this makes sense for our customers.”
To some, however, it may seem like Playstation is putting all of its eggs in one basket. With no thoughts of how the Playstation VR will even do on the market once released, already planning out a Playstation VR 2 is a rather astonishing leap forward. Yes the system will undoubtedly have flaws, but if it bombs badly enough there’s a chance that the Playstation VR 2 will never see release.
Jeff Stafford, a member of Sony’s “Project Morpheus” team, already has ideas for how much more the Playstation VR 2 will be able to do to the human senses while playing.
“We are trying to improve every aspect of PlayStation VR. Make it smaller, easier to use. There are so many things that people want, how to see their hands or their bodies.”
Whether improvements like these, featuring not only sight but also smell and touch, would be viable for a VR system, remain to be seen. Not to mention the various side-effects of virtual reality headsets that include nausea and dizziness for a number of users. Stafford is remaining optimistic, however, that Sony can make those ideas of sensory stimulation become more than a simple design possibility.
