It was more than a year ago—before PlayStation 5 was formally announced—that Sony confirmed its ‘next-gen console’ would continue to support PlayStation VR. Luckily those plans haven’t changed; following the full reveal of the system last week, the company affirms that PS5 will support PSVR. But we still aren’t expecting to see a PSVR 2 announcement until after the console launches.

Although Sony didn’t indicate that any of the games announced during last week’s PS5 reveal will support VR, the company has affirmed that the new console will support the PSVR headset.

“The current PS VR headset is compatible with the new console. We’ll have more product details to share as we get closer to launch,” a spokesperson told Road to VR.

We also asked two of the new games announced last week—Astro’s Playroom and Resident Evil 8: Village—would support VR like their predecessors, but the company said it has “no additional announcements to make at this time.”

PS5 Backwards Compatibility with PSVR & PS4 Games

While Sony had previously stated that PS5 would be compatible with PSVR, it wasn’t a full-blown announcement; it was revealed largely as a side-comment in an interview between Wired and PS5’s Lead System Architect, Mark Cerny.

“I won’t go into the details of our VR strategy today, beyond saying that VR is very important to us and that the current PSVR headset is compatible with the new console,” Cerny told Wired at the time.

Since then, the company has hardly spoken of VR on PlayStation 5. That makes this affirmation good news, because we know for sure the company hasn’t had any second thoughts about PlayStation VR support on PS5.

So far there’s no native PS5 games that have been confirmed with VR support, but at a minimum we known that the console supports backwards compatibility; Sony expects the “overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles will be playable on PS5,” which will naturally include PSVR games as well.

PlayStation 5 is a Huge Hardware Upgrade for PSVR

Image courtesy Sony

As far as processing power, the seven year old PlayStation 4 has aged surprisingly well for VR (partly thanks to PSVR’s low resolution). But it’s clear that hardware improvements would allow developers to create more visually ambitious games for the system.

PlayStation 5 is many times more powerful than its predecessor. Beyond a simple boost in CPU and GPU speeds, the console boasts a new architecture that’s streamlined for a high-speed SSD, which Sony says will allow developers to create games not previously possible. Here’s the official PS5 specifications:

CPU x86-64-AMD Ryzen ‘Zen 2’
8 Cores / 16 Threads
Variable frequency, up to 3.5 GHz
GPU AMD Radeon RDNA 2-based graphics engine
Ray Tracing Acceleration
Variable frequency, up to 2.23 GHz (10.3 TFLOPS)
System Memory GDDR6 16GB
448GB/s Bandwidth
SSD 825GB
5.5GB/s Read Bandwidth (Raw)
PS5 Game Disc Ultra HD Blu-ray, up to 100GB/disc
Video Out Support of 4K 120Hz TVs, 8K TVs, VRR (specified by HDMI ver.2.1)
Audio ‘Tempest’ 3D AudioTech

While these processing and bandwidth improvements are certain to benefit any game built for PS5, the immersive benefits of the console’s new ‘Tempest’ 3D audio capabilities are most exciting for their use in VR.

Sony says that PS5 will give developers far more processing power dedicated to audio, allowing the system to accurately model many 3D sound sources simultaneously, and then project that sound based on an HRTF profile (which alters the sound to more closely resemble sounds coming from the real world).

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While each person’s HRTF profile is different (based on the shape of their ears and head), there’s no easy way to generate your own custom profile. Knowing that, Sony says PS5 will offer a handful of pre-built profiles, and users will get to pick which one offers the most accurate 3D sound for their own ears.

Beyond the improvements in raw horsepower and 3D audio processing, a new stereo HD camera was also announced alongside PS5 and it could mean a tracking upgrade for PSVR and PSVR 2.

Sony Isn’t Expected to Announce PSVR 2 Until After PS5 Launches

Image courtesy Sony

Although a PSVR 2 headset seems likely, Sony has been fairly clear that it wouldn’t announce a new headset until sometime after the launch of PS5. Last year the company’s Senior VP of Research & Development, Dominic Mallinson, said as much.

“There’s no reason for us to coincide [a new VR headset] with a new console. From the point of view of the consumer, to be bombarded with many many things—oh, you have to buy this, you have to buy that—is a message that we don’t want to send. In some ways, it’s good to have a little breathing space between those things,” CNET reported him saying at the time. Mallinson also hinted that Sony is researching features like HDR, wireless, and eye-tracking for PSVR 2.

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The original PSVR headset launched in late 2016, a whole three years after the launch of PS4. The headset alone was introduced at $400 (the same price as PS4 itself at the time), though the bundle with the PS Camera (required) and PS Move controllers (optional) was $500. That’s certainly expensive, but because it wasn’t released at the same time as the console, it may have been seen more as a mid-cycle upgrade for existing PS4 owners, thereby avoiding the sticker shock of the combined console + headset price of $900.

So it seems sensible that Sony will follow a similar strategy with PSVR 2 on PS5, but ultimately the bigger factor may be what kind of technology the company can fit into the headset at their target price point. Sony has aggressively reduced the price of PSVR down to $350 for the full bundle, and it seems like that’s roughly where PSVR 2 will need to stay to compete against the likes of low cost PC headsets like Rift S and even standalone headsets like Quest.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • namekuseijin

    > As far as processing power, the seven year old PlayStation 4 has aged surprisingly well for VR (partly thanks to PSVR’s low resolution).

    that’s a bit misleading, because it’s very common to see VR games not matching psvr display resolution at all, often going for much lower resolution resulting in blurriness. Plus, PS4 can’t handle most current games at a framerate required for VR, even if they attempted lame resolutions.

    summing up: PS4 is a true bottleneck and psvr 1080p 120Hz OLED display is still to see its full potential. Hopefully, PS5 extra power does just that – even with the resolution, may surprise a lot of people.

    The headset is also fully 360 tracked and a new HD camera and extra PS5 power may yield better tracking – couple that with new controllers with independent tracking and the old headset may well leave since pcvr in the dust…

    besides, the best modern pcvr headsets barely quadruple the resolution of this 2016 headset. Well, such resolution boost is exactly what PS5 may afford to psvr games, given many that look like they’re running in 540p or something (looking at you NMS)

    • silvaring

      As you said, the biggest gains could come in that resolution bump and controller tracking. One thing though that personally I would like more than new controllers is more realistic audio. I’ve tried binaural VR audio demo’s (Tuscany VR iirc) but nothing seems to really scream ‘3D audio’ though from what I’ve experienced. Maybe I’m missing something and audio has come a long way in the last few years though, I dunno.

      • namekuseijin

        PS5 comes with superior 3D audio, even for flatties.

        • silvaring

          We don’t know if it will transfer over psvr though do we?

    • Ninjai71

      I expect/hope that new or even old psvr games could finally become super sampling and better antializing on PS5. This would result in a way sharper and smoother psvr grafics, not possible with ps4 pro today. :)

  • gothicvillas

    I have a feeling psvr2 will be wireless… and the new ps5 hd camera wont even be used for VR. At least that’s what I’m hoping for :)

    • Schadows

      Frankly, I cannot see how Sony would launch another wired headset. They target the mainstream market, and MUST provide an easy to use solution, even if they have to cut some features here and there.

    • Kevin White

      Wireless like the Quest? Like a next-gen VR Vita? Or wireless like the Vive / Vive Pro Wireless?

      I don’t see either happening I’m afraid. I think it’ll be a wired headset, but I do think it’ll have inside-out headset tracking… or maybe I’m just hoping for that.

  • Nothing to see here

    Name one PS5 VR game.

    • Alexisms

      No, you name one.

    • Jistuce

      Dead or Alive Xtreme 4.

      Time will tell if I’m right or not.

    • Alex

      Ghostwire Tokyo maybe

    • jacobpederson

      Through existing features like Dynamic Resolution, every PSVR game is a PS5 VR game :)

  • Till Eulenspiegel

    That HD camera should have been released for the PSVR when it launched. The reason PSVR tracking is so bad is because of that ancient low-res camera that Sony use for VR.

    • silvaring

      I think the FOV is a bit low as well, judging from how easily it loses tracking when crouching / moving out of frame.

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