Sony's PSVR 2 Will Play Steam VR PC Games Using An Adapter On Aug. 7
The $60 dongle means PSVR 2 will work with PC VR, too.
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The PSVR 2 will be PC-compatible June 7 with an adapter.
Sony's year-old PlayStation VR 2 headset, which connects exclusively with the PlayStation 5 to play VR games, is becoming a PC accessory soon as well. Sony just announced a $60 adapter, coming Aug. 7, that will allow the $550 (but on sale now via Sony's Days of Play sale for $450) headset to work with Steam VR games on PCs, too.
The news, which arrived today, was expected for several months via reports online. It also raises questions on how committed Sony truly is to the future of its tethered VR headset going forward. But, at the least, it means that the headset's potential audience will be larger soon.
Will it make an impact, though? Meta's Quest headsets already work well with PCs in addition to being standalone VR headsets, and work wirelessly. The Meta Quest 3, for about the same price as a PSVR 2, is already our top PC VR headset choice for that reason. Sony's PSVR 2 has a pair of really good controllers, an OLED display, eye tracking and a comfortable adjustable fit over glasses. But the PSVR 2 doesn't support a lot of its unique features when connected to a PC. According to Sony's blog post, HDR, eye tracking, advanced controller haptics (and the unique force-feedback triggers) won't work with PCs.
The $60 adapter requires a DisplayPort 1.4 cable to connect directly to a PC.
The PSVR 2 headset has 2,000x2,040-pixel resolution per eye (less than the Quest 3's 2,064x2,208 resolution per eye), a 110-degree field of view (same as the Quest 3), fixed foveated rendering (which, similar to Quest, makes areas towards the center of the display look higher-res), and recognizes finger placement near the controller. But it lacks a lot of things the Quest 3 has for the same price: it has no ambient off-ear positional audio (there are earbuds instead), no hand tracking and no mixed reality via passthrough cameras. It also needs to be directly tethered with a DisplayPort cable that's plugged into the PlayStation adapter. Sony's releasing a PSVR 2 app for PCs that will run alongside SteamVR to connect the headset.
Sony lists the PC compatibility specs for PSVR 2 on its blog post, which includes DisplayPort 1.4, 8GB or more of RAM, and a recommendation of Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 (or later) or AMD Radeon RX 6600XT (or later) graphics.
This technically means you could play Half-Life: Alyx, one of the best VR games ever, on a PSVR 2 -- but only when connected to a PC. Meanwhile, Sony's own library of PSVR 2 games on PS5 lacks any big additions lately: no Half-Life: Alyx, no revamps of older PSVR games and big questions as to Sony's future commitment to its expensive PS5 peripheral.