Sony let slip that its Project Morpheus virtual reality headset, which is scheduled for official release during the first half of 2016, is going to be "several hundred dollars."
In an interview with Wired, Sony President of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida, says the firm has found a way to convince people to lay their money down for the Morpheus headset. Sony is relying on developing a lot of new content designed for virtual reality.
"We need to convince PS4 owners to spend several hundred dollars to purchase a Morpheus headset, on top of the PS4 they already have," Yoshida says. "And more gaming content is what will convince them. We have 30 or more games being developed that we are tracking - not all of them will come out at launch, but there are serious efforts being made on all of them.
The number Yoshida dropped is still vague, but for comparison purposes, the first development kit for the Oculus Rift cost $350. For Yoshida, "several" could mean more than two, or the price could go up to the $500 to $900 range. Earlier this month, an Australian retailer posted the retail price of the Morpheus, which is 399 euros or approximately $450, but Sony is not confirming anything.
Although Yoshida is not giving specific figures, he does say in an interview with Polygon, that the price of the headset, like the price of the PlayStation 4, will drop over time. However, he says Sony's main focus is the development of a high-quality, comfortable VR headset more than its price point.
"The number of people who will buy day one hardware will be some kind of reverse function of price, that we understand," he says, "but we really need to do it right from day one."
At Sony's press conference at the ongoing Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, the company showed off a number of the new games that it plans to unleash for Morpheus. These include titles such as the underwater exploration game "The Deep," "Godling" by Solfar Studios and the multi-player shooter game "EVE: Valkyrie" by CCP Studios.
Morpheus is not the only VR headset scheduled for release in the first half of 2016. Oculus and HTC also plan on outing the Oculus Rift and the SteamVR-powered Vive in the same time frame. Sony hopes it can differentiate itself by providing support for multi-player mode and first-person shooter games.
