In a recent newsletter, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman detailed Apple’s purported plans to give the Vision Pro a major gaming boost. The strategy reportedly involves coopting Sony to turn its PlayStation VR2 (PSVR) controllers into Vision Pro controllers.
The main purpose of the PSVR controllers is to support more precise gaming controls on a device that you normally control with your eyes and fingers. But the two companies are also working on making PlayStation VR controllers work with all of Apple’s Vision Pro interface. That is, the PSVR controllers might let you interact with apps and UI elements.
Considering the scope of the partnership, I think it’ll be only a matter of time before we see PlayStation VR games run on the Vision Pro, assuming Sony considers that endeavor worthwhile. But would that be enough to get you to buy a Vision Pro?
Apple’s pivot to gaming started a few years ago. Its custom chips grow more powerful with each new generation, including the capabilities of the graphics processing units inside A-series and M-series chips.
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When the iPhone 15 Pro’s A17 Pro chip came out, with ray-tracing support for gaming, I said that Apple needed a big push to convince more studios to bring their AAA console games to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Remember that most iPads feature M-series chips. The M3 MacBook Air itself can be a great gaming device. There’s untapped potential here. But, as I said before, Apple needs to make a real effort to convince gaming studios to get on board. That’s against the least-favorable possible backdrop. Apple has been fighting developers ferociously on its App Store policies.
A person interacting with the Vision Pro via hand gestures. Image source: Apple Inc.
Gurman makes some of these points in the latest Power On newsletter on Bloomberg. He focuses on the Vision Pro’s lack of gaming support despite the spatial computer’s powerful resources. The Vision Pro runs on an M2 chip paired with 16GB of RAM. It should be able to offer plenty of games to users interested in virtual reality games.
However, developers have two big issues to deal with when considering games for the Vision Pro. First, the user base is incredibly small. Gurman says Apple has sold about half a million units. Not all of the buyers will want PSVR-like games.
Secondly, the Vision Pro was not designed with gaming in mind, and the lack of dedicated controllers proves that. Gurman says that Jony Ive and Mike Rockwell insisted that Apple focus on eye-tracking and hand gestures for controlling the spatial computer.
“Bringing a controller accessory into the equation would have been confusing to developers and further increased costs,” Gurman says. But VR gaming needs dedicated controllers for precise movements.
While I think that eye-and-hand-tracking can be the future of computer interaction, I can’t imagine playing any compelling VR game using this control method. Apple, according to Gurman, is seeing the light.
Apple reportedly approached Sony earlier this year, and the two parties started working on bringing the PlayStation VR2 controllers to the Vision Pro:
Inside Sony, the work has been a monthslong undertaking, I’m told. And Apple has discussed the plan with third-party developers, asking them if they’d integrate support into their games.
That’s a massive effort here, and I wouldn’t expect Sony to embark on such a venture if it didn’t think it was profitable. Gurman further says that Sony and Apple are working on support for allowing the controllers to control the operating system:
The controller’s thumb stick and directional pad could be used for scrolling, while the trigger button could replace a finger pinch when clicking on an item.
There’s one more interesting tidbit in Gurman’s report that makes me think Sony is eying the long game here. The Japanese giant doesn’t sell these PlayStation VR2 controllers separately. It would need to create manufacturing lines for them. Currently, the controllers ship with the PlayStation VR2 headset:
One hiccup is that Sony doesn’t currently sell its VR hand controllers as a standalone accessory. The company would need to decouple the equipment from its own headset and kick off operations to produce and ship the accessory on its own. As part of the arrangement, Sony would sell the controllers at Apple’s online and retail stores, which already offer PS5 versions.
Why consider the move unless it made financial sense for Sony? One way to make real money from the controller’s partnership is to bring PSVR games to the Vision Pro at some point in the future.
This would require porting the games to visionOS. I’d also speculate Sony would want some sort of preferential deal to sell its games on the App Store. It might want its own PSVR store on the spatial computer.
Remember that Apple’s Vision Pro isn’t a one-off product. Apple is working on a cheaper model that could launch before the Vision Pro 2 flagship comes out. The more spatial computer versions in the wild, and the more affordable the device, the better it should do in stores. Once the Vision Pro user base grows, Sony and other game developers might want to take the spatial computer more seriously.
It was at that point that the PlayStation VR2 controllers would come in handy.
This is all speculation from yours truly based on Gurman’s latest report. There’s no indication that PSVR games will come to the Vision Pro in the near future. The reporter also notes that Apple and Sony planned to launch the PlayStation VR 2 controllers a few weeks ago. Something happened, causing a delay. Gurman says the announcement might come at some point soon “unless it gets abruptly scrapped.”
Even in such a scenario, Apple will still need to fix its gaming problem.
