When Oculus VR revealed its full list of launch titles for the Oculus Rift head-mounted display (HMD), during the Game Developer Conference (GDC) 2016 last week, there was also a new comfort ratings system for virtual reality (VR) experiences on the headset. The system is very similar to what’s used for the Samsung Gear VR, listing Comfortable, Moderate and Intense, to give gamers an idea of the likelihood of motion sickness. But it seems not all HMD manufacturers are going down that route. Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) has now said it’ll be taking a different route.
SCE Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida, who’s been the face of the company’s VR push spoke to Digital Spy about that ratings system and what SCE were planning to do. “I’m a fan of the Oculus approach personally, to have ‘Intense’, ‘Comfortable for most’ or ‘Comfortable for everyone’, something like that,” said Yoshida. “But I think our approach will be to go through each rating board, so PEGI for Europe.”
“We discussed it internally and it’s very subjective and difficult to work consistently as there’s so much content coming in. What causes the nausea? It’s not like everyone has the same reaction, everybody’s different, and people get used to some experiences.”
“This is so now. Because we are learning so much, we cannot just come up with one approach of our own, so we prefer to work with the industry.”
The PlayStation VR pre-order launch bundle when on sale earlier today in the US for $499 USD, which includes the headset, two PlayStation Move motion controllers, PlayStation Camera and a copy of PlayStation VR Worlds. Amazon was the first retailer to sell through its allocated stock, other retailers still had pre-orders open at the time of writing.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of PlayStation VR, reporting back any further updates.
