PlayStation’s upcoming exclusive Astro Bot will not receive PlayStation VR2 support, Nicolas Doucet, Team Asobi studio head, confirms to Moyens I/O. Doucet says that the team is “100% TV” and notes that the addition of a VR mode down the line is unlikely.
The Astro Bot series first made a name for itself thanks to PlayStation VR. Team Asobi’s Astro Bot: Rescue Mission was hailed as one of the VR platform’s best games when it launched in 2018, leaving fans curious to see if the studio would develop a game for Sony’s newest headset, the PlayStation VR2. In an interview with Moyens I/O at Summer Game Fest, Doucet confirmed that VR isn’t in the cards for its new game for logistical reasons.
“We’re focusing 100% on PS5,” Doucet tells Moyens I/O. “Rescue Mission was great fun to make. Every medium has its strong points. In the case of a third-person game, whether you work on TV or VR is radically different. This idea that we could add a VR mode is not applicable to this kind of game. It’s applicable to some first-person games like racing, but not for this kind of game. So our choice was to go 100% for TV to really have as many people as possible playing this game.”
That confirmation is another loss for PSVR2, which has struggled to deliver first-party games since its launch. Aside from launch game Horizon: Call of the Mountain and a VR mode for Gran Turismo 7, support from first-party Sony studios has been all but nonexistent on the platform. A new Astro Bot game felt like the platform’s best hope for a killer app, but that won’t be the case.
Astro Bot launches on September 6 for PS5.