We never would have bet on it, but it turns out the former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide StudiosShuhei Yoshida, thanked Meta for his excellent workbut what is he really talking about?
These days, Shuhei Yoshida was invited to speak at the conference GI Live 2022where he also spoke about the PlayStation VR 2. The latter expressed his excitement about the upcoming helmet VR of sonycalling it a “true next-gen experience”. Moreover, he took the opportunity to explain that the Meta Quest 2 allowed the industry of VR to get out of its “slump” and it is for this reason that the President would like to thank the efforts made by Metawhich will undoubtedly make it possible to offer greater visibility on this new medium while bringing it healthy competition.
Still according to the party concerned, the market for VR is still small and growing. Back in 2016, there was a lot of hype surrounding virtual reality when sony and Oculus launched their first helmets VR. After a real boom, the industry fell on hard times and investors lost interest in the VR turning to other horizons (without bad puns related to the metaverse of Meta).
big fan of VRShuhei Yoshida acknowledges the involvement of Meta :
Thanks to Meta: they do a great job of promoting the Quest, so more people come to try VR for the first time. The fact remains that virtual reality is a growing market and that it only represents a “subset” of the console market.
His thanks are justified. In hindsight, Meta has almost single-handedly kept the consumer side of the industry alive by creating a profitable ecosystem for developers over the past couple of years. The studios VR who survived could play a vital role in the PlayStation VR 2.
There are great games like Horizon Call of the Mountain or Resident Evil Village. Yes, they’re amazing, but it’s the indies, in my mind, who really take a risk when they want to make games in VR.
He also spoke about the metaverse :
The metaverse craze has brought new momentum and investment to the industry. We will see excellent VR games from VR publishers who have learned a lot in the meantime and have new resources to implement their projects.
And then followed a long monologue as rich as it was fascinating:
When the video game industry started to take interest in VR, there was something really exciting from a technical point of view or from a gameplay point of view. But since the market was small, what happens is that independents have waited decades to pursue their dreams.
They waited for this technology, like Mizuguchi-san (developer of Rez Infinite and Tetris Effect), to become available so they could make games.
There was a big buzz around PSVR and Oculus Quest when we launched around the same time in 2016, but after a few years investors moved on and 2017, 2018 and 2019 were very difficult.
But there are independent publishers and VR developers who have survived this difficult period. They’ve released new games in VR, they’ve developed this knowledge and experience of how to use this new technology, and they’re making better and better games.
Now with the metaverse, investments are coming back and some of them are investing a lot of money and becoming publishers to help other developers. You’ll see great VR games coming out of these now reinvigorated, expanded, and reinvested VR publishers.
It’s interesting to wonder what the strategy would have looked like VR of sony if the Meta Quest 2 had not been such a resounding success. sony would he have dared a second attempt with the PlayStation VR 2 or would he rather have refrained from doing so, since the studios VR would have in the meantime turned away from the support? We will probably never know. Anyway, it’s nice to hear and see, when we know the tensions that exist between sony and Microsoft on the management of exclusivities. As a reminder, Shuhei Yoshida led the current PlayStation Studios of sony for ten years and has been instrumental in the development of the Playstation-VR. Since the end of 2019, he has supported independent studios on behalf of the company.
If you haven’t taken the plunge yet, you can treat yourself to a Meta Quest 2 to the Fnac, Darty or at Amazon for €449.99. You can also find good PCs for gamers there.