Monday, June 3rd 2024
Sony Announces the PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter with August Availability
It appears that Sony decided to sneak out a new product during the already busy Computex week of new product announcements. This is something many PC gamers have been waiting for, at least those interested in VR gaming. Although the device itself is a rather nondescript black box with a cable at one end, it delivers what many have been hoping for, PC support for Sony's PlayStation VR2 headset. The little black box has inputs for the PlayStation VR2 headset and a single DisplayPort 1.4 input which is connected to your graphics card of choice, as well as a USB port for communication with the PC and a power input of some kind. The only potential downside here is that the adapter won't work with some gaming laptops that only have HDMI display output.
Sony's system requirements are rather pedestrian, although the company is recommending a GeForce RTX 3060 or an AMD Radeon RX 6600XT or better graphics card, for best performance. Another minimum requirement which not everyone might have on their desktop systems, is support for Bluetooth 4.0 or later, but this can easily be resolved with a cheap USB dongle. Sony didn't reveal the full hardware details, which makes it unclear if an extra power source is needed, but it's clear from one of the two photos provided by the company, that there's more to it than just the DisplayPort and USB cables. The adapter doesn't work on PC without a lot of caveats though, as "HDR, headset feedback, eye tracking, adaptive triggers, and haptic feedback (other than rumble), are not available when playing on PC" according to Sony's blog post. The PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter also requires the Sony PlayStation VR2 app to be installed and for now it appears to only be working with Steam VR. The adapter will be available in retail on the 7th of August for an MSRP of $59.99 / €59.99 / £49.99.
Source:
Sony PlayStation
Sony's system requirements are rather pedestrian, although the company is recommending a GeForce RTX 3060 or an AMD Radeon RX 6600XT or better graphics card, for best performance. Another minimum requirement which not everyone might have on their desktop systems, is support for Bluetooth 4.0 or later, but this can easily be resolved with a cheap USB dongle. Sony didn't reveal the full hardware details, which makes it unclear if an extra power source is needed, but it's clear from one of the two photos provided by the company, that there's more to it than just the DisplayPort and USB cables. The adapter doesn't work on PC without a lot of caveats though, as "HDR, headset feedback, eye tracking, adaptive triggers, and haptic feedback (other than rumble), are not available when playing on PC" according to Sony's blog post. The PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter also requires the Sony PlayStation VR2 app to be installed and for now it appears to only be working with Steam VR. The adapter will be available in retail on the 7th of August for an MSRP of $59.99 / €59.99 / £49.99.
16 Comments on Sony Announces the PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter with August Availability
Besides, Steam probably has more data on anyone's gaming habits and preferences than save maybe Xbox (due to being under MS), and if one is already in the PS ecosystem, Sony already has their data regardless. You do have a point about principle with the mandatory PSN part, esp. for those not already in the PS ecosystem.
Updated the news post to make this clear, thanks.
Can pc games make use of the eye tracking, or adaptive triggers, or headset/haptic feedback? They can't.
It's sad it doesn't support either but let's not make a bigger fuss than we should when part of the problem is on the PC side, not on Sony. If there's enough interest perhaps they can include that in the future (the USB cable is there for something afterall) but at the moment it's good that the essential works seamlessly enough since this is still cheaper and better than most of the competition.
1) The frequency of use. The PSVR2 requires this software to be running at all times when using the device and even possibly installs a service like Oculus that's always running.
Mice and Keyboards on the other hand only require you to have the software running when you configuring the device. Settings are saved in onboard memory on the device and run without the software from then on. That's assuming your device requires software at all to be installed, the Wooting 60HE is a good example of a device that requires zero software install. Mind you I've only ever used Logitech G Hub once for my G305 and that's it. Never touched it again and that's a good thing given how utter trash that software is. In general PC gamers do not like peripheral software.
2) What you are able to do with / without vendor software. You cannot use the PSVR2 without this software. You can still use your mouse without the software and you can always install and uninstall if needed. You have that choice with M&K, you don't with the PSVR2.
The two are not even remotely comparable.Your assumption in regards to the amount of data steam has collected is irrelevant to the topic of Sony's data collection. It's an unproven assumption on your end that does nothing but avoid discussing Sony's data collection. In addition, the defeatist argument that because x or y already collect your data and therefore none of it matters has always been a poor one. The reason data collection is bad is because people roll over like you suggest here. You change things one little step at a time and that means arguing that data security in important in each individual instance. Making a bandwagon argument that because something is happening you might as well condone it's continuation is not a constructive argument, it's a logical fallacy.
And again, if one didn't need/want VR options, the VR2 still works like a regular monitor, and there is a homegrown movement to try and get VR2 to work with PC as a VR device. Maybe you'll get lucky and find that they're able to reverse-engineer the translation layer and cut out the need for the VR2 app, instead replacing it with a generic one that doesn't require a PSN account.I never said that it doesn't matter, but at the same time, it's just as stupid to stress out over whether another gaming megacorp has your data or not, directly or indirectly, ESPECIALLY when you're already in said ecosystem like myself, who has been online with Sony since the PS2 days. If you never had one, great! Sony shouldn't be mandating it anyway! Instead, they should be offering FOMO content that would entice users to join voluntarily. As well, I don't get the bad reactions only targeting Sony when Blizzard and Ubisoft are also just as guilty of pushing having accounts with them to play their games too, even if it's on Steam; in fact, having done it longer than Sony. Heck, they used to just create your account for you, using the same data taken from Steam itself and users never realized they had a newly made account until they started receiving updates to their Steam email sent not by Steam, but by the gaming companies directly.
Unfortunately, everyone wants to have their walled garden, whether it's Sony, Apple, Nintendo, Steam, Epic Games, etc, and the US just enables it. Unless one has the financial wealth to pay a data-scrubbing company to keep as much details off the web as possible, or can bully a company to actually take your data off when one puts in a data deletion request, that person is SoL unless they live in the EU, where they have the best digital privacy laws to date. Beyond observing best privacy practices and using privacy-oriented options, there isn't much the average person in the US could do to better defend their privacy without paying so much. You preach about resisting and fighting back, but US privacy laws still suck, and for all that privacy advocates have done, it's still years before we'll see enough change to force big tech to back off. That's not me being defeatist, that's me being realistic.
Unless you were on the development team, you are blindly guessing here.Think about that for a second. You are going to have to disable the service EVERY time you stop playing VR and enable the service EVERY time you want to play VR. I know this because I had to do just that when I had an Oculus headset. That coupled with it randomly stealing focus is why I got rid of it. That was before meta started requiring accounts, thank god I got out of there before that. So much effort when one can get a Valve Index and not have to waste so much time stopping Sony's or Meta's BS.
It's mostly the big brand names that add services with their mice and keyboard. To say it applies to every perhperial is grossly misleading. It doesn't apply to any of the mice and keyboards using a web interface (which is increasing due to popularity). It also doesn't apply to any custom keyboard that I'm aware of and I have yet to see any of the smaller brands install a service either. I've had iGK64s and Ducky's and Pokers and their software is only for configuration, no service. Obviously my 60HE doesn't require any install at all.The only people installing the software for their keyboards are those with 75% or smaller KBs and those with hall effect switches. There's zero reason to do so for any other keyboard as full sized and TKL don't really need key remapping and there's no hall switch configuration to mess with. Most big vendor's keyboard software is horrid to boot, couldn't even remap the Fn key on my Black widow mini so I got rid of it. Litteraly every other board from smaller brands could do that.No, the reason services as part of keyboard installs is even a thing is because customers blindly buy brand names, not quality. Most people don't realize that in fact outside of the big names there are tons of higher quality keyboards that are better than the trash they are being shoveled and the services they justify because "everyone else is doing it!". The upside is that the Wooting 60HE seems to have gotten people to realize they can have an amazing keyboard without that stuff.I haven't purchase a single mouse since 2001 that hasn't had onboard memory. You can buy Red-dragon mice off Amazon for $16 that have onboard memory. I'm not sure which mice you are referring to but it certainly does not represent what the vast majority of PC gamers are using.The steam deck isn't a peripheral and I definitely shouldn't have to point that out.
It's a system in and of itself which is mutally exclusive with the concept of a peripheral
Neither are RGB fans or fan controllers.You can 100% get gamepads without that nonsense, I've got a drawer full of 4 cheap Xbox knockoff controllers without that issue and 2 higher quality xbox one controllers. The vast majority of controllers do not install a service. I didn't even know such a thing existed but then again I don't spend extra money to get ripped off Corsair and then inconvienced to boot. The moral of the story is avoid brands that do things you dislike and going off the beaten path often pays off.I personally have never been on any of the console networks, social media, ect.
That said it's never a bad time to stop giving them your data. Data's value is weighed heavily based on the date it was collected. Just because they have your data up till now doesn't mean there isn't value in stopping.
There's also something to be said of the quantity of data collected. Allowing them to collect data from you everywhere just because they are collecting data from you someplaces completely ignores the fact that this isn't a all or nothing situation. Reducing or stopping data collection from one or more sources has a big impact on their ability to build a profile on you and the ability of others to purchase that data and subsequently build a profile. Each data collection avenue closed is a postive step.No one liked / likes having to sign into another account to play their steams games. The games that did that and still do that are widely panned for doing so and rightfully so.Steam isn't a wallet garden. Developers can generate keys that they can sell on other platforms with 0% of those sales going to steam. There's a reason there are so many key sites selling steam keys. If steam was a walled garden you wouldn't have the competitive key marketplace that exists on PC.
A lot of those EU laws are influencing US companies. There have been more and more companies offering data deletion requests and a ton of website ask for cookie permissions when visiting them. Of the website's I've worked with, cookie permissions and data deletion requests are handled the same regardless of what country you are from. It would be far more work to do things differently depending on a customer's country.
It might be years before anything is passed in the US but I see positive changes being made slowly over time. Best privacy practices are good though regardless of what the laws are.