Why I Sold My PlayStation VR (And Pre-Ordered A Nintendo Switch)

I love PSVR. There, I said it. From a technical point of view Sony’s first foray into virtual reality has been an immensely successful one, creating the most cost effective entry point to the technological frontier, in what is arguably also its most consumer-friendly form. Let’s face it, PSVR looks like the kind of futuristic electronic device that Steven Lisberger envisioned when he was creating Tron, and compared to the staid monochromatic offerings from HTC and Oculus it’s a phenomenal piece of design technology. Having said that, I’m done with it. For now at least.

As with any new console technology I always want to be there on the first day. When you think of those poor saps who choose to deal with the feature-impoverished, clunky, erratic behaviour of launch day hardware, you’ll find me at the front of the line, paying through the nose to be the first to try it out. PSVR was a wonderful surprise in that sense, with a straightforward and clear set-up, and technology that basically just worked at a price point that it’s rivals must have looked at with abject fear. This wasn’t another Kinect – either the first or the second – but a genuine VR revelation that ran quite happily on a standard PS4.

Let’s not forget the games. My favourite titles of last year included a number of the PSVR’s early hits, including Tethered, Thumper and Rez Infinite, while big hitters like EVE: Valkyrie and Robinson: The Journey sold me on the incredible immersion that the format was capable of. These games were, and are, utterly deserving of anyone’s time, and if you’re a fan of gaming you owe it to yourself to check at least a couple of them out.

But it all feels too familiar. Sony have a history of putting out some amazing pieces of technology, but their failure to support them is almost as remarkable. Most recently we’ve had to watch the support for the PS Vita unceremoniously dry up, brought about in part by the closure of the studios behind a number of the console’s best exclusives. The closure of Guerrilla Cambridge last month, the team behind PSVR exclusive RIGS: Mechanised Combat League, has set those same alarm bells ringing.

The PlayStation Experience event at the end of last year did little to assuage any of those worries. Just as hopeful PS Vita owners had to sit through numerous E3 conferences with little word of anything coming out for their prized possession, there was little there to show what PSVR owners can expect in 2017. Sure, there was Dino Frontier and Starblood Arena, but this was the undoubtedly the opportunity to cement the PSVR’s future. While there have been some fantastic games for it thus far, it has to be said that a number of them are more experiential tech demos than fully fledged games. Sony needed to show that there was a meaningful future for their headset and they simply haven’t.

It’s possible at this point that we’ve already seen the biggest release of the year for the format in Resident Evil 7 – the announcement that some of that game’s DLC doesn’t work with Sony’s headset feels a little unusual. Sure, Farpoint might have a decent shot at taking the title, while bringing back some Wii-esque plastic peripherals, but the PS4’s AAA releases have, at most, “PSVR experiences” to satiate those who’ve parted with their cash.

So with that backdrop, and having played everything that had interested me in the format up to now, I’ve sold up. Thanks to the poor lines of supply from Sony, I got back every single penny I’d spent on the headset, making the whole decision relatively free of guilt. If Sony proves me wrong – and I genuinely hope they do – I won’t really lose out on anything if I pick one up again in the future.

And here I am again at the front of the queue, putting money on Nintendo and the Switch. They’ve arguably had similar problems in the last few years, but not for want of their own  trying, rather that they haven’t been able to convince third party developers to invest any time of their own. In the case of the Wii U it still amounted to a a release schedule bereft of anything for months on end, and an early exit for what remains a clever, if often confusing, piece of hardware.

But I have to be there on the ground floor, on day one, trying it out. In terms of software we already know that it’s woefully under-supported at launch, but there’s a steady stream of AAA games that are due throughout the rest of this year. We already know that it doesn’t have any streaming apps, despite being the perfect kind of hardware for them. Maybe we’ll get them, maybe we won’t, but on launch day it looks as though the system is going to be the purest games console we’ve had for a long time, for better or worse.

The thing is, I’m fairly certain that as a fan of Nintendo games, the Switch is going to be a hit with me. My Wii U is still sat merrily under the TV, and won’t be moving when its younger sibling arrives anyway thanks to a huge range of fantastic, exclusive games that my family will return to for many years to come. As it stands, I can’t see the PSVR having that same legacy, despite all of the things it gets so right.