WATCH: PlayStation holds up ‘Skyrim’ as this year’s VR totem
The virtual reality of sprawling role-playing adventure “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” is to lead PlayStation’s charge for living-room virtual reality as part of a $499 PlayStation VR bundle this holiday season.
Releasing on Nov. 17 for PlayStation 4, “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR” is the latest iteration of a game first debuting in 2011 to critical acclaim and commercial success.
Through the use of PC-oriented VR headsets such as the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, virtual reality “Skyrim” experiences of varying quality have been possible, thanks to a number of community-created modifications and guides.
But “Skyrim VR” represents the first official route to full immersion, having been developed by the game’s originating studio, Bethesda.
The virtual reality outing is understood to sacrifice some of the visual fidelity of “Skyrim: Special Edition” (already available on PlayStation 4 as well as Xbox One and PC) in order to achieve its goals.
Even so, PlayStation anticipates that the prospect of “Skyrim” in VR will appeal to new players and longtime fans.
By June 2017, some seven months after PS VR’s debut, the company announced that 1 million headsets had been sold, meaning that 1.65 percent of PlayStation 4 owners had bought into the tech, a proportion it surely hopes to increase by the year’s end.
The PS VR “Skyrim” bundle comes with the headset system, the PlayStation Camera and pair of PlayStation Move controllers required for motion tracking, and a 13-title demo disc as well as a “Skyrim” package that includes the game’s three major add-ons.
It also includes the second and most recent version of PlayStation’s virtual reality headset, which totes integrated headphones and a slimmer cable, as well as support for HDR pass through which means less hassle connecting and disconnecting the kit’s intermediary Processor Unit.
The PS4 console is sold separately.
“Skyrim” itself has won more than 200 game of the year awards since then, and one could be forgiven for thinking that publisher Bethesda Softworks is trying to match that tally with 200 different releases of the game.
And, as it happens, Nov. 17 doesn’t just mark the arrival of “Skyrim VR” which is expected to land on PC sometime after, but also the first portable console version of “Skyrim” via the Nintendo Switch. JB
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