In a short, 15-minute keynote speech in San Francisco on Tuesday, Sony Computer Entertainment President Andrew House made the virtual reality market much more interesting.
While the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive virtual reality headsets are being released this March and April, House announced that Sony's headset, the PSVR, will be released in October. Despite the relatively late release date, however, Sony just might have created the perfect formula to make its VR headset a clear winner.
According to House, the PSVR would be offered at the very competitive price of $399. That's right, seemingly stepping out of character, Sony has opted to price its product far cheaper than the competition's.
The Oculus Rift is currently priced at $599 and the HTC Vive is offered at $799, making the PSVR a third cheaper than the Oculus Rift and half the price of the HTC Vive.
Apart from the price, Sony also announced what is possibly the PSVR's killer feature - its compatibility.
Unlike the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, which require a fully-fledged gaming rig in order to enjoy full support, Sony assured consumers that the PlayStation VR headset only requires a working PlayStation 4 for it to function optimally. Considering that there are about 36 million PlayStation 4s in the wild, the market for the PSVR is indeed very massive.
In a lot of ways, Sony's decision is quite ingenious, focusing on creating a device within the parameters of its current best-selling console rather than creating an extremely powerful, high-spec headset which the general gaming market would not be able to utilize. With its relatively low price, the PSVR, if any, seems designed to thrive within the PS4's hardware limitations.
Despite this, the PSVR is no low-end device, with a Field of View that is set at about 100 degrees, almost similar to the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive's rumored FoV of 100 to 110-degrees. The PSVR's FoV is also higher than the Gear VR, which has an FoV of 96 degrees.
The PSVR also operates at a constant 120hz refresh rate, which is actually higher than the 90hz refresh rate offered by the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. A 5.7 OLED screen with a resolution of 1920x1080 is also installed in Sony's headset.
Sony also stated that it plans to have about 50 games ready for the PSVR by the end of 2016.
