The PlayStation VR2 dispassionate review

One month in, is Sony’s virtual reality peripheral for the PS5 all we hoped for?

The PS VR2 strives to prove that virtual reality is as impressive and as promising as ever at a time when most tech giants seem to be losing faith. Can it succeed in doing that? (Image: Triyansh Gill, Unsplash)

So, it’s been a month already! After tactically dropping information about it for more than two years — talking about the hardware, its design, its backward compatibility, its cost and its launch lineup — Sony finally released its PlayStation VR2 virtual reality peripheral for the PlayStation5. Its predecessor, the company’s first such product, was released back in autumn 2016 for a totally different system, under totally different circumstances. This means that any review of the PS VR2 will have to take the original PS VR into account, but also recognize that we’ve seen many VR systems and games since then. The Metaverse was also not a thing in 2016 (assuming it’s a thing in 2023), Apple was not getting ready to enter the VR/AR arena in 2016 and Microsoft had not already abandoned AR/VR in 2016. It’s, for better or worse, a totally different market.

After this first month, it’s time to take a dispassionate look at PS VR2. But this can’t be just about how this new version of PlayStation VR compares to the previous one as, knowing Sony, it was bound to be much better anyway. It must also be about how the PS VR2 is positioned compared to other competitive products, about what it brings to the table as a VR device as…