Hold that pose

Project Morpheus is looking a little EyeToy at the moment, isn’t it? While there are other players in the virtual reality space this time around, the whole notion of a gimmicky peripheral designed to run largely European developed games reminds us of when Sony launched its ill-fated PlayStation 2 camera peripheral, which never really had much purpose outside of party games.

However, speaking as part of a virtual reality panel at PlayStation Experience this weekend, Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has hinted that there’s much more than minigames in production for its hi-tech helmet. “We’ve been showing experiences that are intentionally passive and easy on people to make sure that everyone who tries [virtual reality] has a great time,” he said.

He continued: “We’ve been doing lots of experiments, and discovering lots of great stuff. Some of the experiences are quite fast, and we are surprised at how we don’t get sick. [We are working on some stuff] that I can’t talk about that [core] gamers will enjoy.” The affable executive concluded that the projects that it’s got in production will keep players occupied for a “long time”, too.

It’s an interesting comment, and suggests that there may yet be more to Project Morpheus than looking at sharks in a bathysphere. Still, we remain unconvinced that titles of a traditional sense are going to remain enjoyable in virtual reality for more than a few minutes at a time. The technology’s definitely neat, there’s no doubt about that – but we’re still not convinced that it’ll ever amount to much more than a novelty.

[source youtube.com]