The final major player in the virtual reality market has finally announced its release date and price. PlayStation VR will be launching in October and will cost $399, though if you don’t already own a PlayStation 4 camera, you’ll need to lay down an extra $60 for the headset to work.
The launch announcement was made by Andrew House, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, made the announcement via video, which you can see above, and a post on the official PlayStation blog.
“Today more than 230 developers are building content for PlayStation VR, from smaller independent teams to larger studios at the industry’s top publishers,” House said. “We expect to have more than 50 games available from launch in October 2016 until the end of the year. Of course, the full promise of PlayStation VR will continue to grow over time as talented developers create new experiences and new genres that wouldn’t be possible outside of VR. The future looks bright indeed.”
The consumer version of PlayStation VR will come with a headsets and lots of cords and other things you’ll need in order to use it. But it will not include a PlayStation 4 camera, though that peripheral is required in order to play. Sony told Polygon that the reason the camera isn’t in the bundle is because some people already own it. Fair enough, but the announcement should have mentioned that extra expense for those who don’t own it.
PlayStation VR was a huge part of the PlayStation Experience last year. Lots of VR games were announced including the bird simulator Eagle Flight from Ubisoft and a remake of the rhythm-based on-rails shooter, Rez.
Now that all of the big three contenders in the VR space have announced price points and release dates, it will be interesting to see how things shake out, especially with as much $200 differences in price.
