PlayStation head Jim Ryan, who's president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, recently spoke to the Washington Post ahead of the PlayStation 5 launch, due for November 12th in select countries and November 19th elsewhere in the world.
In this interview, Ryan also briefly discussed the state of PlayStation VR, which seems to have been set aside by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Indeed, the executive's words confirm that he believes it will take quite some time before Virtual Reality gaming goes mainstream.
I think we’re more than a few minutes from the future of VR. PlayStation believes in VR. Sony believes in VR, and we definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment. Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. But will it come at some stage? We believe that. And we’re very pleased with all the experience that we’ve gained with PlayStation VR, and we look forwarding to seeing where that takes us in the future
This statement certainly does not put to rest any concerns about PlayStation VR support going forward. There's no official word (though we've had rumors, of course) on a second, improved edition of the Virtual Reality headset, and the PlayStation 5 doesn't exactly appear to have been designed with VR in mind. At launch, PSVR will operate as a backward compatibility device on PlayStation 5, and UploadVR got told that customers will have to use the PlayStation 4 versions of games such as Hitman 3 and No Man's Sky in order to play those on PS5 through backward compatibility. This also suggests these titles won't get a significant graphics enhancement powered by the next-generation console's much more powerful hardware.
Of course, this situation could change in the future, but for now, PlayStation seems to be slightly less excited for the future of Virtual Reality gaming than it was a few years back.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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