By Nelson Schneider - 10/11/26 at 12:29 AM CT
Most of us at MeltedJoystick have been having a great time this Summer watching Sony sh!t the bed so hard and frequently that they’ve started sleeping in their toilet instead. This week we got another handful of sprinkles to throw on top of the Failure Cake that is Sony Interactive Entertainment.
It turns out that the PlayStation maker has decided to get out of the Virtual Reality space, and demonstrated this intention by selling all of their VR patents to Facebook. Ironically, Big Journalism outlets were eager to glaze the PlayStation VR2 headset when it launched, frequently claiming it was better than other headsets put out by the likes of Valve, Meta, or HTC. Yet in the three years since the PSVR2 launched in February 2023, Sony only released about 20 exclusive games for it, with nothing resembling a system seller. Meanwhile, the rest of the VR ports that hit the PSVR2 were a likewise milquetoast bunch that have still failed to really ignite Virtual Reality as the next big thing in gaming.
Of course, Meta/Facebook itself has been increasingly less than enthusiastic about the future of VR, with ever-cheapening headset designs and near radio silence from CEO Mark Zuckerberg about his “Metaverse” pet project, after shutting down the core component earlier this year. Indeed, the only major tech company that still seems to have faith in the future of VR is Valve, who just recently released their Steam Frame stand-alone VR system – which is, sadly and like everything else in our modern corporate hellscape, highly supply-chain constrained. I signed up for the waiting list for the chance to buy one... but I also signed up for the waiting list to buy a Steam Controller 2, and still haven’t had my number come up yet, so I’m not holding my breath that I’ll get to play VR games on my own system by the end of the year.
But on the bright side, at least I wasn’t stupid enough to buy a Sony headset, thinking that they would support it long-term or provide any compelling exclusive games. This IS Sony we’re talking about!
