Sony is cobbling together the PlayStation 4 Neo as its upcoming PlayStation VR headset was reportedly going to be terrible running on standard PS4s.
That’s according to an anonymous chief technical officer (CTO) working in the industry, who told EDGE (via IBTimes) that the device requires something with a bit more horsepower to allow it to shine properly.
"PSVR was going to be terrible on a [launch] PS4. It was going to be truly awful. Something a bit more powerful starts to bring VR into range. If you want to deal with crazy requirements for performance in VR, you absolutely have to do this."
The use of the word ‘was’ indicates that the source could have been referring to the performance of PS VR prior to the introduction of an external processing unit, which ships with every PS VR as part of the package.
"I’m not interested in marketing strategies or adoption rates or whatever. I’m not considering that. But as someone who does the technology for video games, somebody doubling my GPU and adding 30% CPU is brilliant. I’d love that every two years. I’d love it every six months, if possible. All I want is the most powerful hardware that I can get my hands on,” added the CTO.
Another source, this time a lead designer at a European studio, added: “There hasn’t been a real outcry for more power, apart from developers making VR stuff – and those are weighted more heavily at the moment. VR is the most exciting development in the industry right now, and if it’s here to stay then there will be a lot of demand for more powerful hardware."
PlayStation VR is due to ship in October 2016 priced at $399.99/£349.99. The PS4 Neo, meanwhile, is rumored to be announced at some point prior to the launch of Sony’s virtual reality gaming device, with a release date set for March 2017.
New reports this week claimed that Sony’s PS4 hardware revision is not going to be as powerful as Microsoft’s own Xbox revamp, codenamed Scorpio.