PlayStation Global Head of R&D Dominic Mallinson discusses what's next and why there's no rush yet for a new headset
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The PSVR has been a success story relative to other VR hardware, selling over 4.2 million headsets so far, but the PlayStation 4's install base of 96.8 million dwarfs that. Mallinson admits PSVR "does need to evolve. It's not quite there yet as a mass market proposition." A key step could be making it easier and less cord-tangly. "We do want it to be lighter weight, and easier to put on, less cables, less mess."
But a wireless option could take the form of an add-on, instead of the default. "Wireless suffers from the issue of being expensive," Mallinson says. "If you don't care about cables, then it's a lot cheaper than to have a wireless system. But at the same time, having wireless just makes you so much more free."
No mainstream VR headsets use eye tracking yet, but eye tracking (or gaze tracking) is something that PlayStation's actively considering, and Mallinson considers crucial. "That's the one that excites me the most... I think there will come a point in time in the not too distant future when you cannot launch a VR headset without eye tracking." It could have practical benefits, too: eye tracking can help reduce graphics load to make games perform better via a technique called
foveated rendering, which could help a game console perform more like a high-end PC. "It's a win-win in that respect," says Mallinson. "For me it's a pretty obvious technology."
Part of the current PSVR design was always about getting to the lowest price possible, which meant using existing PlayStation Move controllers and PS4 cameras instead of VR-specific controllers (while PlayStation VR games can also use the standard DualShock 4, he says Move has won out slightly with developers). "We knew if we went back into the R&D labs and we did something brand-new, we could have created something better than PlayStation Move, but it would have cost more," Mallinson says, but hints that a better solution is coming. "We do recognize that does need to be evolved, and in the future we will obviously replace it."
Mallinson seems satisfied with how PlayStation VR rolled out several years after the PlayStation 4 was on the market. The current PSVR will be PS5-compatible, which means a new headset isn't necessary right away. And that could mean Sony waits to debut a new headset for a while. "There's no reason for us to coincide it 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."
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