Everybody's Golf Dev Skips PSVR2 for New VR Golf Game

Who would blame them? Sony took care that PSVR2 is the Xbox Series X in the VR space, a potent platform with poor first-party support. While the Quest is the leading VR platform, like PS5 is for console gaming.

Sony should have acquired Clap Hanz and had a new Hot Shots Golf game ready to go for this generation.

Definitely a missed opportunity.

Because meta paid for the release or because the dev didn’t think the PSVR2 userbase was high enough compared to Meta Quest 2 (and 3)? If the later it may well just be ported later once the work is done.

Such a shame. I’d love a new Everybody’s Golf game on PS5. Never mind, I guess.

I'm reasonably confident it'll be ported over eventually. But a shame. I'd love a new HS Golf game, VR or otherwise.

Hopefully this is an actual golf game and not another caddie dating simulator.

Do feel there was a massive falling out between Sony and Clap Hanz. Easy come Easy golf isn't out on Sony consoles but out on the switch. Not a big golf fan but put so many hours into the Everbodys golf games over the last few generations. Loved the PS2 one where you could play as Ratchet and Jak.

I hope this comes to PSVR2 later. Sony’s lack of PSVR1 ports is embarrassing. The fact that third party come over much more reliably is horrible. PSVR2 is great and Sony needs to act like it.

Don't play the vr all that much but I'll definitely pick this up, shame for both the psvr2 players...🤣

Why don't the other players have any legs

Which is further along it's dying freefall, Foamsters or PS VR2? 🤷‍♂️

Everybody’s Golf was one of my favourite PlayStation franchises. I was gutted when Clap Handz stopped working with them.

Looks like I’ll just have to get it on the Quest 3.

I own PSVR2 and Quest 3 but I always hope and wait for a game on Quest to come to PSVR2 as I prefer the system. So it's a sad thing. I really hope Sony wakes up and at least brings us Astro Bot 2. If Astro Bot 2 will be flat only it would be a HUGE blow.
Quest as the leading platform vor VR is a horrible thing. I like the quest but the graphics are so poor. Imagine Switch would be the leading platform for AAA games.

Hot Shots Golf 3 on the Playstation 2 was my personal introduction to videogame golf, and I loved every iteration thereafter. The series' crisp, vibrant visuals and varied courses were always a joy to experience, and its rock-solid mechanics and multiplayer capabilities made it a go-to for me for years.

Needless to say, I was hugely disappointed when I learned that Clap Hanz had left Sony's platform. Quite frankly a new Hot Shots/Everybody's Golf entry for the PS5 would fill an immense void for a console that, for me at least, still hasn't come close to offering the variety of genres and multiplayer options of generations past..

On that note, I already preordered Ultimate Swing Golf for my Quest 3, because I trust Clap Hanz to deliver an experience on par with those previous great memories. That's money that Sony left on the table when they let this awesome studio go.

Clap Hanz is 100% salty at Sony. They wouldn't of made 2 golf games that can run on either of their systems and not put it on Playstation if they didn't feel screwed over after Everybody's Golf on PS4

It may not be "real" golf, but Walkabout Minigolf is at least a fantastic fix and more than just a golf game with the treasure hunting. It's become one of my most played PSVR2 games, mostly spent doing the treasure hunts instead of golfing, though. Great game, shame it has quest graphics and doesn't really use PSVR2's capabilities much. WTF happened between Clap Hanz and Sony and is it part of Jimageddon?

@Max_the_German Series X|S has more robust sales than the entire history of Quest headsets. PSVR2 is more like the WiiU. Or Vita.

I've owned them all.

I need a drink.

@rjejr That's funny. It hurts. But it's funny.

@bindiana Agreed. It seems to me like something happened behind the scenes to make them avoid PlayStation entirely. It's not like Easy Come Easy Golf wouldn't have been an easy port to PS4/5.

@NEStalgia I personally feel like PSVR2 offers much more than Vita ever offered at this point. Sony has problems supporting it unless there’s something we don’t know, but third party support has been quite good so far.
Sony really just needs to ensure games don’t just go to Meta at the least.

On one hand a shame, on the other hand it looks worse than every bodies golf on psvr1.

Having played Everybody's Golf VR, we're not missing out on much.

Don't worry folks, according to the PSVR sub-reddit, the PSVR2 launch was a soft launch and any month now Sony will do the 'proper' launch of PSVR2!

@rjejr No no you have it all wrong.

The fact PSVR2 has old dated lenses with a tiny sweet spot, low resolution, pentile display, corded, grainy mura, bulky form factor, blurry high persistence display etc is made up with the DEEEEEP blacks!

@NEStalgia Comparing PSVR2 and Wii U is unfair. The Wii U had a fantastic first-party lineup.

@Jaz007 I agree that the experience for the VR2 owner is excellent owing to the 3rd party releases, and especially the bigger ones. But I think the same could be said about Vita. I don't even mind the lack of first party games support on VR2 so long as 3rd parties bring it. Though even Vita had a lot more. What really kills it is that they priced it massively out of its own market (more expensive than Quest 3 with more dated hardware, and it doesn't even have the built in mobile device to make it stand alone....more expensive than the console itself) followed by quite literally zero marketing. Worse than zero, because the negative press of low sales with no image propping from Sony became the marketing of sorts that says "don't buy this, buy Quest instead", and the worse the install base looks the less 3rd parties will really pay attention to it. Max_the_German had it half right about being the Xbox of VR with Coming to Steam and Quest....but not PSVR2" but that was even over the top because that almost never happens even with Xbox, basically everything goes to it except if it's reaaaallly Japanese, or has some kind of Sony/Nintendo deal going on. Thus my WiiU/Vita comparison. "Coming to every platform - except yours!" feels familiar as a Vita/WiiU/VR2 owner.

At this point, if they slashed the price in half and put some big game on it, it might have a chance, but as it is it's poisoning the well for a VR3 ever being able to exist. I doubt they care, either. VR's not the next big thing after all, and they're fighting huge budget problems already.

@TrickyDicky99 Honestly the "lenses" "pentile" "grainy" "resolution" problems don't seem to apply to games that actually are meant to use the hardware. Cyube, NMS, Legendary Tales, the games that actually use foveated rendering properly look beautiful through it. It's all the blurry low res quest games and 60fps repro retail conversions that make those issues stand out. The sweet spot though is a menace, no argument there. You adapt to it, but you shouldn't have to.

@Max_the_German Oof. Truth. Vita it is, then.

@Max_the_German That cuts deep man. I spent over £500 on that POS. I also bought a Wii U too. don't take any advice on what gaming console or accessories to buy from me

The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fairway.

No golf clap from these hanz. Not on this decision, that is.

It’s gutting how VR2 turned out. I was day one with it too!. As soon as I loaded up Horizon and got that blurry image I knew it wasn’t going to end well though. So much talk so little delivered on that one Sony. Just give us the peripheral we all want. PSP2.. hell.. make the PS6 a PSDeck

Probably a timed exclusive like Easy Come Easy Golf was on Apple Arcade. Guessing the switch port of eceg didn’t do all to well seeing clap hanz dropped the Easy Come Easy Golf title for this one.

@NEStalgia Truth always hurts. 😝

@TrickyDicky99 Maybe Foamstars needs some DEEEEEP blacks to offset the colors? 😁

@NEStalgia The grainy mura is constant no matter what the game is. It just becomes less visible when displaying certain colours.

A 2000x2040 pentile display isn't cutting it in 2024.

Everything about PSVR2, apart from the eye-tracked FR, is dated.

@TrickyDicky99 the mura at least in my sample is only noticable in dim to black environments. Definitely present but only received in certain titles. And not on all black (space) for example. But the thing with mura is it's panel specific so you may have a way more annnoying panel than mine. Games that render good resolution don't suffer from the display res and arrangement. But there's only a few of those. Red matter 2, nms, cube, legendary tales. A few others. Not many.

@NEStalgia All games suffer from the pentile display.

Having a game running at full resolution doesn't negate the fact it's still a pentile display. If it was RGB sub-pixel it would look better, that's just a matter of fact.

Compare Red Matter 2 on PSVR2 vs Quest 3 via PC at full resolution.

Like John Linneman of Digital Foundry said, Quest 3 via PC is like 2 generations ahead of PSVR2.

@TrickyDicky99 Well, compare anything against Pc vr and pc will will by a mile but that's a niche of a niche of a niche. Basically psvr2 and quest 3 without a PC are the only real games in town and psvr2 has decent rendering and an ok but flawed and overpriced headset. Quest has better optics but lousy tablet graphics. Pc fixes that for $$ and devs hate pcvr because the myriad headsets to support and players are never happy Even when they do it.

My dream is still if my theory of the future of Xbox as a PC, steam deck like, is true that they'd let you just plug quest in. It's a big dream but it's a dream

Title should be: "Golf game exclusive to Quest."

It's not coming to PCVR, either...

@Max_the_German So far PSVR has a substantial catalog between 7 exclusives, multiplats, AA classics and indie gems-of 180 there’s at least 80-100+/dozens of objectively solid games/experiences (estimate of consensus high/well acclaimed scores and praise from those who’ve played them).

@Jaz007 There’s been about 30-ish or so PSVR1 titles ported over from/also on VR2. And yeah eventually could use more 1st party but 3rd party etc. non 1st party has always been the bulk of most platforms also. PSVR2 has a great catalog so far already.

@MagicMonkeyBoy So far PSVR has a substantial catalog between 7 exclusives, multiplats, AA classics and indie gems-of 180 there’s at least 80-100+/dozens of objectively solid games/experiences (estimate of consensus high/well acclaimed scores and praise from those who’ve played them). Some good stuff been releasing/ed in 2024.

@Mikey856 So far PSVR has a substantial catalog between 7 exclusives, multiplats, AA classics and indie gems-of 180 there’s at least 80-100+/dozens of objectively solid games/experiences (estimate of consensus high/well acclaimed scores and praise from those who’ve played them). Some good stuff also been releasing/ed in 2024.

@twenty90seven Because they’re all relatives of Rayman. Legs are for tables. Also why have something if they clearly, transparently don’t need it, as demonstrated here by relatives of Rayman.

@Daft_Klebenflw Yes, maybe. And solid exclusives, multiplats, … are just not good enough for me. I invest only a small fraction of my time in gaming. And in that time I want to play fantastic games.

Disappointed… maybe I’ll go buy another VR headset. I really love the golf game on the first PS VR system. It was a lot of fun. I hope one day this will be ported over.

It's probably because the PSVR2 has a tiny playerbase, is overly expensive (needing a PS5 and headset) and then you have the costs of developing it for that specific headset why waste all that money on a dead VR headset when they can focus on the Meta Quest which is the leading VR headset as well as the leading headset for Steam VR users

I said it when the PSVR2 came out Sony would just pump and dump it to make a quick bit of money of their die hard fans who buy anything Sony same as that PS portable device thing that was quickly forgotten about, I really don't know what's going on over at Sony these last few years

@TrickyDicky99 agree with everything you are saying about the PSVR2 v Quest 3.

I have both and the Quest 3 genuinely does look two generations ahead when you look through the lenses.

I think the future of console VR, is for the headset to be much like a TV.

You can buy all sorts of TV's. 60hz, 120hz, VRR, no VRR, HDR, no HDR, 4K, 1080p etc etc. You can plug them into any console.

People can buy Quest 3's and be perfectly happy using them as standalone devices.

Or you can plug them into a PC and utilise the superior processing power.

Why not plug them into an Xbox Series X or PS5 too....?

That might actually lead to a larger potential install base of VR headsets for PS5 (and XSX), and encourage more VR conversions to those consoles. If we'd gone down that road, anyone with a Quest 3 and an XSX/PS5 could utilise it and that would've been more attractive to developers.

Meta may have been more likely convert some of their exclusives like Lone Echo or Asgard's. Even Valve might have considered Alyx...

Nothing stopping Sony still paying some firms to bring their own exclusive conversions either.

It simply de-risks the entire exercise for Sony, as they are no longer having to take risky investments in hardware. Let Meta do that.

@SgtTruth I was heavily into VR back in 2017. I mostly played VR last gen, haver around 130 PSVR games and 3 other headsets.

Back then people were doing mental gymnastics regarding lack of growth, the technology etc. Heck I bought tons of 'experiences' because VR was new, but it's been several years now and we desperately need a steady stream of AAA games.

I genuinely thought PSVR2 would herald a new era for AAA VR games, most of them being hybrid, but as soon as Sony revealed the price I knew it was all over. They sent it out to die, it will just be Quest ports now.

@NEStalgia @SgtTruth Seems definitely never tried RM2, etc. on PSVR2 – with DFR it’s on par with high end/settings PC version, just not necessarily highest/ultra end/settings, which is fine because still impressive as is and unnecessary – and people still manage to enjoy on Q3/2 level, PSVR1, retro gaming etcetera. Also with the OLED panels while smaller sweet spot the colors are more vibrant/deeper (but flat panels perhaps would be a better trade off later). All titles with DFR get a significant boost (though even without most VR2 still fine enough to enjoy for myself and many others).
Also the pricing (though could use a price reduction if/when appropriate) is fair and reasonable given the additional features such as headset haptics and eye tracking, reaching great 2K per eye threshold resolution. Regardless of whatever currently myself and others quite enjoy VR2/1, alongside traditional monitor/handheld gaming as well.

@TrickyDicky99 Seems definitely not tried RM2, etc. on PSVR2 – with DFR it’s on par with high end/settings PC version, just not necessarily highest/ultra end/settings, which is fine because still impressive as is and unnecessary – and people still manage to enjoy on Q3/2 level, PSVR1, retro gaming etcetera. Also with the OLED panels while smaller sweet spot the colors are more vibrant/deeper (but flat panels perhaps would be a better trade off later). All titles with DFR get a significant boost (though even without most VR2 still fine enough to enjoy for myself and many others).
Also the pricing (though could use a price reduction if/when appropriate) is fair and reasonable given the additional features such as headset haptics and eye tracking, reaching great 2K per eye threshold resolution. Regardless of whatever currently myself and others quite enjoy VR2/1, alongside traditional monitor/handheld gaming as well.

@Daft_Klebenflw OLED panels have nothing to do with the lenses, which are the cause of the small sweet spot

PSVR1 was OLED and Quest 1 was OLED.