A GATEWAY TO A SECOND-COMING-GENERATION: PROJECT MORPHEUS

Tuesday, March 18, 2014


By Jamaal Ryan

The Oculus Rift was always a distant thing for me. Reserved for early adopters and busy developers, the Oculus Rift was even more foreign to me than PC gaming, an elaborate work in progress that I may get my hands on sometime in the distant future.

Somehow, the rumors of Sony’s VR project didn’t quite grab me. Perhaps I associated it too close to the Rift, or categorized it next to other forgotten concepts such as Microsoft’s IllumiRoom. But here we are, first introduced to Project Morpheus for the Playstation 4.

Properly aiming for the complete VR experience, Sony’s Morpheus looks to emulate immersive sight, positional sound, and tracking. Sony doesn’t stop there however, as they’re also looking into how Morpheus will be integrated with the Playstation 4’s accessories; that being the Playstation Move and the Eye.

This is a fascinating thought, giving players the tools to extend the VR immersion to a more somatic experience. “Silly” camera games could be more meaningful as you look left, right, up, and down while reaching into your virtual world through the Playstation Eye, or perhaps sinking into a more invested experience with the Move’s motion control supported by button inputs. The possibilities extend to a new second-coming-generation beyond a high-end PC-esque/interconnected console era.

Though Sony’s vision of Project Morpheus reaches outside of gaming as well, as a gamer, this is the most exciting news I’ll possibly hear all year as Sony is the perfect company to be heading such a project in this industry. Shuhei Yoshida and Sony’s aggressive call for indie developers has presented itself weekly, with new games constantly being announced for their platforms. It’s almost mathematically expected that developers who are working on the Oculus’ tech are now looking to bring their content to Morpheus. In fact, EVEValkyrie – previously announced exclusively for the Oculus Rift – will also support the Morpheus as well

This not only gives way to games like Ciess and Virtual Internet Hacker, but also potentially to projects like BeAnotherLab’s works and concepts like Nevermind.

Today, gaming just got a whole lot brighter.

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