Sony considers the Project Morpheus Virtual Reality head-mounted display (HMD) will make an impact as a platform for content development instead of simply being a peripheral to Sony's game consoles. This was the claim made by Shawn Layden, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America in an interview.
Layden made the statement to Forbes, who talked with him after the company's presentation at the 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles. "VR for us, it's not a peripheral," Layden said, "It's a platform. It has the ability to impact gaming the same way that smart phones [changed] cell phones."
Although Project Morpheus got only a few minutes of stage time at Sony's E3 presentation, the company has already earmarked a few game demos for the HMD at E3 2015, including an underwater adventure called "The Deep" from Sony's London Studio, and what looks to be the most promising, if not the most disturbing one - a tech demo called "Kitchen" from Capcom, maker of the legendary "Resident Evil" series of survival horror games. "Kitchen" has already received glowing impressions from gaming writers this early, and the success of the demo with Project Morpheus hints at a bright future for the head-mounted display once it hits markets.
But when will Morpheus arrive? The HMD is said to be months away from release, and according to Shuhei Yoshida, Sony's head for worldwide studios, the company "hasn't decided" on when it will ship. However, Yoshida insists that "the hardware is on schedule."
Layden's optimism about Project Morpheus being a whole new platform for entertainment is not entirely unrealistic, as it is after all, under the multinational Sony conglomerate, with interests in movies, television and the music industry among others. He believes that while the gaming industry may serve as the gateway for VR as a means of general entertainment consumption, it won't be long until more traditional media will snap it up.
"I think Morpheus is going to have a similar impact on gaming or entertainment consumption." Layden says, "I think over time, the non-gaming applications of VR are really going to explode and perhaps even be larger than the gaming piece,"
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