Sony seemingly closes the door on PlayStation VR as it sells more than 40 VR patents to Meta
Sony published two original games for the PlayStation VR 2
Sony has sold more than 40 VR patents to Meta in an apparent scaling back of its VR ambitions.
According to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records, spotted by ZDNet, Sony has sold 43 patents related to VR to Meta, the social media giant behind Facebook and the Quest VR headsets.
In a an agreement signed in December of last year, this number will eventually rise to over 400 global patents, with 180 of those being based in the US. The remaining 239 are patents filed in Japan, China, Korea, Europe, and other regions.
PlayStation VR2 launched on February 22,2023 at a price of $549.99 / £529.99. For this, players got the PS VR2 headset, the PS VR2 Sense controllers and stereo headphones.
While PlayStation VR2 launched with Sony first-party support in the form of Horizon: Call of the Mountain, that launch title was one of only two original games published by Sony on the headset. The other was Firewall Ultra, developed by First Contact Entertainment.
The PlayStation VR2 was met with positive reviews from critics, who agreed it was a significant technical jump from PlayStation 4‘s PSVR, but the lack of backwards compatibility with older VR titles, the price, and the lack of industry wide VR development made it a tough sell.
In 2024, the PSVR received a significant price cut, of more than 30% for the standard headset. At the time of writing, PlayStation VR 2 is still in stock on PlayStation Direct, as is the Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle that launched alongside the headset.
Also in 2024, the PSVR 2 received PC support, which many saw as further indication from Sony that support for the headset was a low priority for the console maker. This PC support required a PC adapter to function.
In October of that year, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s senior vice president and head of global marketing, Eric Lempel, described VR as a meaningful business for the company, but one that was yet to reach its potential.
“The VR category is important to us,” Lempel said. “It’s a category that can help us with innovation. It’s never going to be the only way people play games, but I’m happy that we’re in it. There are great experiences to be had and consumers really like it. But it’s a nascent business for us.”
