Sony invited approximately 300 members of the press for a special presentation today as part of the Games Development Conference, using the occasion to finally announce a release date and a price for their virtual reality headset for the PlayStation 4.

Image courtesy of the Verge

PlayStation VR will be released in the U.S. in October of 2016 and will run $399.

Sony CEO Andrew House was on-hand for the 15 minute presentation to show off the final consumer hardware, as well as the specs for the unit.

PlayStation VR will feature a 5.7 OLED screen with 360 degree tracking across 9 LED’s. The single field of view will be 100 degrees which will be rendered at 120 frames per second.

Latency is also a big technical issue with VR, and PlayStation VR aims to keep this at a minimum at less than 18 milliseconds.

PlayStation VR will let players interact with virtual objects through the standard DualShock 4 controller, as well as Sony’s motion tracking PlayStation Move. (Remember those?)

House did not get into too many specifics regarding new games for the device, although he did promise that upwards of 50 games will be released between the October launch date and the end of the year. One new project he did announce was a partnership with EA, Lucasfilm, and Dice to bring a VR version of Star Wars Battlefront into Sony’s new virtual space. They also announced PlayStation Room VR will be available as a free downloadable title for all PlayStation VR owners.

Sony’s pricing announcement places the PlayStation VR as the least expensive virtual reality device that will be available on the market this year, edging out the $549 Oculus Rift and the $799 HTC Vive, both of which also require hefty PC’s in order to run.

source: the Verge liveblog of the event.

source: Thanks to Geoff Keighley, who streamed the event on Twitter via Periscope

Are you ready to enter VR space when the PlayStation VR launches this October? Do you think $399 is too much to pay? Give us your real thoughts on our virtual comments section below.

Written by The Watchman

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