Apart from a few demos behind closed doors, Sony's virtual reality headset Project Morpheus was notably absent from the Japanese giant's E3 presence this year. If the nifty piece of tech's no-show has you worried that the firm has completely forgotten about it, you've no need to fear. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House assured us that supporting the device is absolutely a priority.
"It’s definitely more than an experiment. We’ve made some commitments; we’re putting significant investment into the product," the executive said. "We think there’s something there that could be really, really interesting for a next frontier of game development.” It's unclear what these sorts of investments might mean, but we suspect that we'll be finding out in due time.
Intriguingly, House also mentioned that the company's initial experimentation in the area was a response to developer demand. “It struck me that if there’s a variety of game developers showing interest in this space, then it’s probably time to jump in and see if we can play a part and give them the tools that they’re looking for,” he said.
Are you still jazzed to get your hands on a Project Morpheus, or is the prospect making you queasy? Let us know in the comments section below.
[source theguardian.com]
Comments 26
I read "The Guardian" as "The Last Guardian" and suddenly it all made sense.
@rjejr Don't play with my emotions like that
Not sure how I feel about this these days. Sony has a history of developing cool tech, undersupporting it, and then letting a competitor improve upon the concept. So, it needs the significant investment.
At the same time, I'm still not convinced this is the future innovation everyone keeps claiming it is..
I still have my PlayStation move controllers. I thought Sony had completely forgotten about them until they said that they would work on ps4. But I have yet to see anything support them on ps4. I feel the move controllers support will be the same for this VR venture they are getting into. Support it at first than forget about it.
I'm with @get2sammyb - it's a cool technology, but for gaming I think it's a fad/niche product, like 3D. I certainly don't want to be sat there for hours with that hanging off the front of my face, so I hope whatever they release for it is also playable on a standard 2D screen.
I've used one of these things before, and although this will no doubt be much lighter, I suspect it's still going to be a noticeable weight, and become irritating after a relatively short time.
Oh that is a shame I would rather SONY spend their time & money on more Normal AAA Exclusives really. Oh well.
@get2sammyb "I'm still not convinced this is the future innovation everyone keeps claiming it is..."
These are exactly my thoughts about VR. I just can't see it being mass-market enough.
I hope Sony aren't wasting their money here...
@Carl-G +10
Forgotten? Why do you suppose we won't be seeing AAA first party games for the Vita? Why most studios are silent? Everybody is working for Morpheus.
I think Sony are spread too thin at the moment. There's Morpheus, the PS4, PS3 and Vita. Add to that PS Now and PS Mobile and even PS Home. I don't think they've enough talent to go around.
In the world of no publicity being bad publicity I suspect that Sony is simply using Project Morpheus as a marketing message to all tech aficionados out there to say "we're still on the cutting edge of gaming and tech". I think it's a good idea if that's the case because it's cheap publicity. After all, who knows exactly what "significant investment" actually means.
I want it still. Y'all can keep on drinking that jaded juice.
@get2sammyb Exactly, sadly. Also, I think the PS4 doesn't have the grunt to really display 3D inside a virtual display at a decent resolution/screen size/frame rate. This might be one of the problems Morpheus could be facing. The prototype unit has a field of view of 90°, whereas Oculus Rift has a 110°, so you potentially have less immersion out of the box with Morpheus.
The final unit might very well have a broader field of view, but I can see why Sony would go with 90, as the PS4 often enough needs pretty much all of its power to display shiny graphics in native 1080p with proper effects and shaders and such when going 2D, so doing all that for 2 screens with a decent frame rate, which would be needed for an immersive 3D experience, might just push the hardware a little too much.
Guess we'll have to wait and see how it all pans out, but the way I see it, Morpheus on PS4 will be some kind of hidden beta test to evaluate the technology and market acceptance, before Morpheus 2.0 will be fully realized on the PS5...with a bigger field of view and the grunt in the back to run the games at at least 1080p times two in at least rock solid 60 frames (or better: 120) per eye.
Since I can't see "real" 3D as most can, a virtual reality system like Morpheus would be interesting for me for the potential immersion in the game (think Dead Space *shudder), so a limited field of view for me would be a deal breaker. But I'm very looking forward to see more about this.
@voodoo341 Well Vita has publicly been phased out, PS3 is fading into the sunset, which leaves the rest of the PlayStation platforms/services. They'll cope, because PlayStation4 has third party support, which takes off the stress.
@get2sammyb Oh god! Whose going to make "Vita 2"? I don't think Nintendo alone can survive in the handheld market, another gen. especially since that is in decline.
I don't think Facebook would plonk down that amount of money in VR if it wasn't a viable business. As odd as that choice was
I'm sure I'm not the only one who WANTS to sit there for hours with something like this strapped to my head. And I don't care if it has motion tracking or anything like that. I simply think it would be exponentially more fun playing any game with a gigantic personal movie screen wrapped around my head. I know something like this already exists, but I want it cheaper and more comfortable.
I'm honestly looking forward to this the thought of being able to be more immersed into games gives me goosebumps and the fact that developers will have the ability to make more unique and detailed worlds intrigues me so I am all for Morpheus as long as Sony supports it with a range of good games.
Seeing as they now don't need it to sell the ps4 as its doing just fine on its own, it may perhaps get left behind like vita, let's hope not.
@get2sammyb "I'm still not convinced this is the future innovation everyone keeps claiming it is..." I completely disagree. There are so many possible applications for VR not including games that it has to get big. It will make a huge difference to the world if it is done properly and not made too expensive or awkward to use. And not filled with invasive adverts. and not used for real life hatred, violence or evil. Looking forward to it. Horror games are gonna be on another level. Gonna try Alien Isolation on Oculus Rift 2 this month. I will be taking spare underwear.
@Reverend_Skeeve Remember that Morpheus has a lot of processing hardware built in (meaning the headset does all the heavy lifting), unlike the Oculus Rift, where the computer does the lions share. This is an important distinction.
That being said, I think this will be about as popular as '3D' for many of the same reasons.
@MoleZandor
I think this will be about as popular as '3D' for many of the same reasons. It has very limited application. First Person games are a very small fraction of the games being released for any platform (I have almost zero interest in playing games in that perspective), and I have yet to be convinced that its useful for any other perspective other than maybe an RTS style command game. The hardware, even selling at cost (or lower) will be prohibitively expensive for most gamers, and as history has shown, "optional accessories" are rarely ever given support. Even the best hardware will give headaches, nausea, etc... to a not so small group of people.
Sure there are other non gaming related things you can do with semi-VR, but there are also non gaming related things you can do with the Kinect and as cool and useful as some of those are, it did not bring about a camera revolution, nor will the semi-VR headsets.
I must have more faith in the VR future. How about for patients in hospitals who are completely paralysed. Using brain activity they could use occulus to walk around and interact in a virtual world, effectively giving them a "second life" .
The tech is getting better everyday. There are some pretty interesting things going on. I understand what you are saying about the first person view, it is the only one that makes sense. I can't understand your zero interest in it though, but each to their own.
Have you used an occulus rift yet? it is very different to a 3D TV.
Regardless of whether or not they bother to make AAA games they SHOULD make it compatible with most first person type games. If they don't then it deserves to fail.
@thedevilsjester Alright, I didn't know that. This sounds a lot more promising, then, all of a sudden. But do you know if the processing power inside Morpheus also helps to shoulder the graphics calculations or maybe is just for the headtracking and positioning and such?
Any way, I'm still very interested in the tech. For the immersion alone, having a "virtual" 80" screen around your head, coupled with good headphones, this could be amazing. I still think this will need one more video console generation to really take off.
@Reverend_Skeeve There is no way that the headset could perform graphical calculations and get those back to the console in time to be useful. It might be able to perform some post processing on the images it gets from the console (so maybe it could shoulder the burden of anti-aliasing and such, freeing up the console to focus on other things) but I doubt it would make a huge difference. I don't know the technical capabilities of the hardware, so this is all just theory crafting right now.
I agree that it will need at least one more console generation to really take off, the problem is, if it doesn't take off now, it won't see another console generation. It is akin to 3D. Sony had a huge 3D push during the PS3 era, but for various reasons (not many people had 3D capable TV's for starters) it fell flat. We were still in the process of getting the majority of gamers to (at least) 720p HDTVs, let alone 3D capable ones. It would need another generation before 3D could really take off. Unfortunately this meant that 3D was only popular in niche markets, and because of this, developers did not utilize it much and Sony all but abandoned it. This is what will happen with the semi-VR headsets as well.
@thedevilsjester Hum, yeah, I guess you're right about the graphics stuff of Morpheus...might be too big of a lag problem. But then we do have the problem again I mentioned above...even if Morpheus does the calculations for the headtracking and all non-graphics related stuff on itself and leaves the PS4 resources for the graphics calculations, the GPU of the PS4 might just be to weak for a propper 3D-VR experience. The CPUs and GPU of the PS4 [ï]are[/i]customized, so some years down the line, devs will most probably be able to squeeze some nice stuff outa there, but it's basically mid-range PC stuff, nonetheless. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Not sure if I agree with your assessment of the future of VR. You're right about the "3D implosion". Many people during last gen were busy getting a HDTV at all and not much concerned about 3D. Also, of course, 3D-HDTVs were quite expensive for most of the time last gen and the last-gen hardware was mostly to weak to power decent graphics in 3D. Thus, as you said, the concept fell flat, mostly. by now, 3D TVs are affordable but mostly used for 3D Blu-Rays which is indeed a niche-market somehow.
But I think VR will take off, if not for the reason alone that Facebook pumped over 2 billion into Oculus Rift. They will find a way to get the tech into homes and into peoples everyday living. This will broaden the acceptance for the technology in general and maybe by that generate a demand for it in gaming as well, so I think there's still a good chance we'll see a refined "Morpheus 2.0" together with the PS5.
I at least hope so for entirely selfish reasons...I am a child of the 80ies and grew up with Cyberpunk stories and movies like "Lawnmower Man" and to actually see the tech come to reality would kinda blow my little, nerdy mind...even if I can just enjoy the immersion and won't benefit from the 3D effect.
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