Sony confirmed that games that were released for the first PlayStation VR headset are not backward compatible with the upcoming PlayStation VR2.
In an episode of the Official PlayStation Podcast, Hideaki Nishino senior vice president of platform experience, says, “PS VR games are not compatible with PS VR2 because PS VR2 is designed to deliver a truly next-generation VR experience. PS VR2 has much more advanced features like all new controllers with haptic feedback, with adaptive triggers as they’ve said, inside-out tracking, eye tracking in it, 3D audio is coming together, of course. So this means, there will be games for PS VR2 that require a whole different approach than the original PS VR.”
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The news is disappointing, though not entirely unsurprising. PlayStation has long been inconsistent with the concept of backward compatibility. While PlayStation 4 games can be played on PlayStation 5, other games from the PlayStation’s generational catalog do not work on the system.
In particular, PlayStation 3 backward compatibility has been a contentious issue for Sony. While PS3 titles are available through PlayStation Plus, they can only be played through cloud streaming. Physical PS3 disc games don’t work either on PS4 or PS5 either. In comparison, Xbox has done a much better job in making sure that many popular Xbox 360 games and even some original Xbox games can be played on both Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
Even without backward compatibility, PS VR2 still has an impressive lineup of games coming to it, including Horizon Call of the Mountain, Firewall Ultra, and Resident Evil 4 Remake. The headset is expected to launch in early 2023.
