Rumours are starting to surface that Sony will at last be revealing its product for the virtual reality market. The announcement is expected to come at Sony’s ‘Driving the Future of Innovation’ session which is to be held on March 18 at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The two hosts of the session, Anton Mikhailov and Richard Mark, both hold very senior positions in Sony’s R&D Department and both were heavily involved in Sony’s previous innovations, the PlayStation Eye and PlayStation Move.
According to developers who have experience with this device, the technology is very impressive. However,there is little support for it amongst third parties so far. This is mainly due to the high cost of virtual reality development and the small size of the market. It will be up to Sony’s own internal studios to build the first software for the system and to encourage other publishers to jump on board. Yet this many not be as easy as the Japanese giant hopes. Third parties are already developing software for Sony’s main rival in the virtual reality space, the Oculus Rift. There are several third party games announced for this competitor including Space Hulk: Deathwing by Streum On Studios and Eve Valkyrie by CCP. The Oculus Rift is expected to launch either late this year or early next year.
Nevertheless Sony will have some huge advantages in this upcoming battle. The company behind Oculus Rift, Occulus VR, is a newly funded start up company, whilst Sony is a huge multinational. Plus Sony has very close partnerships with third parties as well as a large number of its own internal studios. Finally, the console maker captive audience thanks to the power of the PlayStation brand and the success of the PS4. Occulus VR on the other hand has to start from scratch. With these factors in mind, Sony has a very real opportunity to be the company that brings virtual reality into the mainstream.
Via Edge
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