Since its initial reveal, it’s been expected PlayStation VR won’t be able to keep up with other high-end VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive when it comes to hardware, mainly due to the fact that it’s powered by the PlayStation 4 and not a high-end PC.
In a rare move, however, Sony recently admitted PlayStation VR won’t be a technical powerhouse when it launches at some point in 2016. PlayStation executive president Masayasu Ito recently said, “If you just talk about the high-end quality, yes, I would admit that Oculus may have better VR,” in a recent interview with Polygon.”However, it requires a very expensive and very fast PC.”
Both Facebook’s Oculus Rift and HTC’s Vive require a Intel i5 processor or higher, a NVIDIA GTC 970 graphics card, and at least 8GB of RAM. All in, a PC powerful enough to run the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive costs somewhere between $1,000 and $1,500. On top of this price, the Oculus Rift headset costs $914 and the Vive comes in at $1,149. On the other side of the spectrum, for PlayStation VR to operate, only a $429 PlayStation 4 is required, though, it’s unknown how much Sony’s upcoming virtual reality headset will cost.
The most significant area the PlayStation VR lags being its competition is screen resolution – 2160 x 1200 pixels for the Rift and Vive vs. 1920 x 1080 pixels for PlayStation VR. This resolution disparity results in the PlayStation VR’s headset looking significantly more pixelated, a fact we noted when we went hands-on with the upcoming device a few months ago.
