Sony’s taking a firm stance on the quality of games that they’ll allow to appear on PlayStation VR. It’s 60 fps or bust, according to senior developer support engineer Chris Norden.
As part of a PlayStation VR talk at GDC, Norden said:
Frame rate is really important; you cannot drop below 60 frames per second, ever. If you submit a game to us and it drops to 55, or 51…we’re probably going to reject it. I know I’m going to get flak for this, but there’s no excuse for not hitting frame rate.
It’s really hard, and I’m not going to lie to and say it’s extremely easy…it’s really difficult. 60hz is the minimum acceptable framerate. Everybody drill that into your heads.
Those are some pretty stern words, but nobody can really blame Sony for wanting to maintain a certain level of quality for the peripheral. At a cost of $399, consumers are rightly going to expect something that consistently delivers great software that utilizes its power.
Norden doesn’t stop there, either. He continues to address the confusion over what the small black box that comes bundled with the package does.
He said, “I see a lot of media misreporting what that little black box does, and it’s driving me crazy,” before continuing to explain that its job is to interact with the PlayStation 4’s interface and deal with audio processing.
Not that anyone should really be surprised at all, considering the amount of money the company has undoubtedly poured into researching and making the device, but Sony seems dead-set on delivering a premium virtual reality product that can rub shoulders – in terms of quality – with the likes of the more expensive Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
PlayStation VR releases in October this year, and you can expect to see a whole lot more of the device at this year’s E3 in June.