This year will be the fifth for Sony and its highly successful PlayStation 4 console, launched in November 2013 and capable of selling over 76 million units to date. Analysts and gamers alike are already speculating on when the Japanese giant will elect to launch the inevitable successor - the PlayStation 5. Whether it's 2019 or 2020, according to the developer Harold Vancol, Creative Director at Grab Games interviewed by the latest Official PlayStation Magazine UK (March 2018, issue 146), reckons that PlayStation 5 and PlayStation VR shouldn't be bundled together - though they should be considered essential when paired.
Buying a new console is a big undertaking for a lot of people, and buying the headset that I think people want to see in the future of PlayStation can almost be like buying a new console. So having these purchases separated gives each thing its own time to shine. However, PlayStation 5 and PSVR should be considered essential together.
Vancol, whose team has worked on John Wick Chronicles (alongside other studios) and Knockout League, also pointed out that we may very well be approaching a "sweet spot" of sorts for the first generation of VR devices (PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive).
A lot of VR experiences are just fundamentally different from the way we've all been used to playing and that's really exciting.
As the amount of great content goes up, the price of hardware goes down, which gets us to a sweet spot. I think the first generation of VR is approaching that sweet spot.
PlayStation VR remains the best-selling VR device of this first generation with over two million units sold as of early December 2017, though expectations were a bit higher overall for all Virtual Reality devices before they launched.
Gamers as a whole, particularly mainstream ones, are still quite lukewarm towards VR, too - would it be the right choice for Sony to make it so that PlayStation 5 and PlayStation VR be "essential" together? Let us know your opinion in the comments section.