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Sony has confirmed that the upcoming PlayStation VR2 headset won’t be backwards compatible with games made for the original version of PlayStation VR.
“PSVR games are not compatible with PSVR 2 because PSVR 2 is designed to deliver a truly next-generation VR experience.” said Hideaki Nishino, Senior Vice President at Sony Interactive Entertainment to PlayStation Blog. “PSVR 2 has much more advanced features like all new controllers with haptic feedback and adaptive triggers and inside-out tracking, eye tracking in the headset, 3D audio … all coming together of course. So this means developing PSVR 2 requires a whole different approach from the original PSVR.”
PlayStation’s main rivals over at Xbox have held the fact that their consoles are backwards compatible and that many games have “smart delivery” optimisation and enhancement features up as one of the strengths for their console platform for a while now. PlayStation has generally seemed hesitant to match that feature set, instead preferring to sell bespoke versions for each platform and introducing plans to charge fees for upgrades on first party game software.
PlayStation VR2 is expected to release in early 2023, and there’s as of yet little to no word on which PlayStation VR developers will be porting their games to the PSVR 2 at this time, or if when they do, gamers will be able to pay for the upgrade like they can between some PS4 and PS5 games. We hope that Sony do have some sort of cost-friendly solution in mind for this situation in the near future, as it’s always annoying to have to leave your library behind (or have to repurchase things at full price) every time the next piece of next-generation hardware comes out.
