Sony has announced that Gran Turismo 7 will be getting a free VR upgrade for PlayStation VR 2 alongside the next generation headset’s launch on 22nd February, joining the launch lineup of games that are coming out next month.
A short snippet of VR gameplay was also shown, demonstrating a full race situation around the recently added track Road Atlanta, though it’s not clear how extensive the VR support will be. Will it be for the full game without restrictions, from single player to online multiplayer? Or will it be limited to certain modes and scenarios?
This isn’t the first time that virtual reality has been built into a Gran Turismo game, with GT Sport having support at its launch for the original PSVR headset. However, this was a thoroughly disappointing inclusion, heavily restricted to single car time trials. With GT7’s VR upgrade being exclusively for PSVR 2 and therefore requiring a PlayStation 5 to play, Polyphony Digital can be far more ambitious.
Sony has promised a large launch lineup of more than 20 games for PlayStation VR 2, with a range of new games, upgrades to older VR titles such as Beat Saber (which was also confirmed during the presentation), and new VR modes for games such as GT7 and Resident Evil Village. During the CES presentation, SIE President and CEO Jim Ryan stated that there are now “more than 30 games” in development for the launch window.
Gran Turismo 7 launched for PS5 and PS4 in March 2022, providing great foundations that Polyphony have been able to iterate and improve upon with successive monthly updates. In our GT7 review, I wrote:
“Gran Turismo 7 takes everything that was excellent about GT Sport’s fantastic multiplayer, high fidelity cars and circuits and innovative Scapes mode, and builds up a more traditional GT experience around it. It’s got its own quirky new ideas which will likely be passing diversions to most, but at its core, this is the Gran Turismo you know and love. Broad and accessible, but with depth, nuance and competitive racing for those keen to find it.”
Polyphony are also considering a GT7 PC port.
camdaz
YESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!
I’ve been waiting for this announcement since the PSVR2 was first announced. Please be the whole game or as close as possible.
MrYd
You just know they’ll come up with some stupid reason why it can’t be the whole game. Possibly it won’t let you race other people online because you’d have an advantage in VR. (But any advantage of a wheel over a controller is fine)
camdaz
Probably. I can’t think of any technical reason why it cannot be the whole game but I’m hoping we’ll find out very soon.
I wonder if they didn’t announce this earlier (like with Sport & PSVR) to get more pre-orders for other games, I probably wouldn’t have gone for the Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle if they had announced it before pre-orders opened.
MrYd
I think everyone was assuming it would happen, but Sony have just been slowing announcing other things. PSVR2 exclusives are probably more important than a VR update to an older game.
And hopefully now they’ve got the holidays out of the way when they were quite rightly concentrating on PS5 sales (with PSVR2 not available), we should hopefully get more announcements over the next 7 weeks. I get the impression there’s quite a few more games that are getting updates that they haven’t been allowed to announce yet. Definitely looks like a few more PSVR1 games getting a PSVR2 version. They waited until now to announce Beat Saber is getting a PSVR2 version (looks like it might not be at launch though?). And more obscure things like the strangely relaxing Puzzling Places is a “we neither confirm nor deny the allegations of Puzzling Places being ported to PSVR2… yet”. So that’ll be an announcement soon then, I guess.
GT7 in VR is obviously going to make a lot of people happy (if they don’t mess it up and it’s only limited VR content again). But I don’t think it’s going to make anyone rush out and spend the £530. New, PSVR2 only stuff is what they should be announcing.