I don‘t know if Sony plans to make VR a true mass market product, but if they do, then the way they‘ve been handling it so far hasn‘t been particularly conducive to this goal.
They‘ve been making things way more complicated than they need to be. I‘m especially disappointed that the PS5 controller is just another regular controller; I think it should instead have been a controller that can be broken up, so it can be used as a dual motion controller like the Switch joycons (Sony even has patents about such a dual-purpose controller, so we know they‘ve been thinking about this).
That way, every PS5 owner would already have a VR-ready controller from day one, and would only need to buy a VR headset to get started (or use the PS4 headset). The userbase would be unified as far as control schemes go, which makes it easier for developers to make VR games. But as things are now, PS5 owners would have to buy not only a headset, but also a new set of VR controllers. Sony could sell their next gen headset and VR controllers in a bundle of course, but that would make it much more expensive. But if they‘re selling them separately, then not all PS5 owners will have the new VR controllers, which means developers will have to make their VR games compatible with both normal and VR controllers.
I also suspect that Sony (as well as other companies making VR hardware) feel that it‘s necessary to have super complex VR controllers that are capable of finger tracking and all kinds of fancy stuff. But I believe that‘s a mistake; normal motion controllers with good tracking and nice haptic feedback should be more than enough for now. Finger tracking strikes me as kind of a dead end, at least until we reach a point where proper VR gloves are possible. Finger tracking sounds nice on paper, but without some kind of physical resistance you‘re just grabbing empty air anyway.
But more than that, if all PS5 controllers could be used as motion controllers, then it would be possible for VR players and non-VR players to play certain games online together, since they would still use the same control scheme (I‘m mainly talking about shooters here, where motion/pointer controls are superior both with and without VR). This would make VR part of the broader gaming market, instead of letting it occupy its current niche, which is more or less separate from the rest.
Instead of treating VR as some exotic oddity, Sony should treat it as they did the original dualshock controller on PS1: Make it optional, but also something that‘s supported by most of the games that come out. There would still be VR exclusive games of course, but I see no reason why ‚normal‘ games shouldn‘t have an optional VR mode. Is it really that hard to have a VR mode in your typical Assassin‘s Creed game, for example, where the player looks the main character over the shoulder?
