Sony’s first State of Play – a livestream looking at what is in store for PlayStation 4 owners in the future, along the lines of Nintendo Direct – included a number of announcements, primarily of games for the PlayStation VR headset.
Chief among those were first looks at Iron Man VR and No Man’s Sky VR. Iron Man VR is being developed by Camouflaj; on the PlayStation Blog, Camouflaj Director Ryan Payton said: “In Marvel’s Iron Man VR the player, who plays as the genius inventor Tony Stark, confronts ghosts from his past — powerful forces who seek to ruin him and everything he stands for.” Iron Man VR will be released for PlayStation VR only in “2019”.
Hello Games announced that No Man’s Sky: Beyond will be the first version of the game available for PlayStation VR. Like the non-VR version of No Man’s Sky: Beyond, No Man’s Sky VR will be available for free to all existing owners of No Man’s Sky.
For those who don’t own PlayStation VR headsets (recent reports suggest 4.2 million PlayStation VR headsets have been sold, while more than 76.5 million PlayStation 4s have been sold, so about 5.5 per cent of PS4 owners also have a PlayStation VR headset) perhaps the most enticing element of State of Play was a glimpse of Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled. Developer Beenox revealed a set of retro skins for its PS4-exclusive remake of the 1999 arcade-racer.
State of Play also previewed ReadySet Heroes, a dungeon-crawler from Robot Entertainment; sci-fi adventure game Observation, due to release on May 21, 2019; and delivered the news that Concrete Genie will include two PlayStation VR modes, although it will be playable without a PlayStation VR headset.
With Sony absent from this year’s E3 show in June, PlayStation owners would be well advised to keep their eyes open for future instalments of State of Play.