Yoshida: VR a Powerful New Medium That “Can’t Be Done” With Conventional TVs, Consoles and PCs

During a group media session with Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida at E3, which PlayStation LifeStyle was part of, Yoshida was asked what the greatest potential was for VR (virtual reality) with Sony and other companies like Oculus, Samsug dabbling in it.

According to Yoshida, VR is a powerful new medium that you can’t do with conventional TVs, consoles and even PC.

Potential for Project Morpheus…if you have tried any of the (Oculus), Morpheus — even Samsung’s VR — you feel like you’re in a different place. So that’s really a powerful new medium, that we cannot do with conventional TV and game consoles or PC. So, y’know, Project Morpheus allows game developers to put the gameplay into the game world, or make players part of the story. Like if you’ve tried the experience like in London Heist we showed at GDC and we’re showing again at E3…you are part of the story; game characters know you are there, and y’know, you can interact with the other game characters. So that’s a really powerful experience that you can never get playing on conventional games on TV.

So that’s the tool we are giving game developers. When you look at games being made on VR, lots of games are made for VR, so that’s the best way to approach. When you look at the other new mediums like social network (networking), games on Facebook, or games on mobile, the hit titles aren’t coming from existing (video game) publishers. Games Farmville, Angry Birds, Clash of Clans came from new types of developers focused on a new medium — how best to use that new medium.

Virtual Reality is the same, so I’m looking forward to new types of developers very focused on making games and experiences on VR, and that will create the best result — especially if you’re indie developer, there’s so many great indie games coming out every week on consoles and PC. So it’s becoming very difficult to make your games stand out. So because VR is still early and not all of them (indie devs) have jumped on to make VR games, it’s a great chance — opportunity — for indie developers to work on VR now, so that when you release a game, near the launch of Project Morpheus or Oculus, lots of people will take a look at your game.

While this all sounds exciting, don’t forget that Sony themselves haven’t decided just when Project Morpheus will exactly be out other than first half of 2016.

Do you think VR will be everything Yoshida thinks it will be or will it go the way of the PlayStation Move and 3DTV?

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