Astro Bot isn’t getting PlayStation VR2 support, Team Asobi confirms

By Giovanni Colantonio June 12, 2024

Astro Bot wears a dog backpack. — Sony Interactive Entertainment

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This story is part of our Summer Gaming Marathon series.

PlayStation’s upcoming exclusive Astro Bot will not receive PlayStation VR2 support, Nicolas Doucet, Team Asobi studio head, confirms to Digital Trends. Doucet says that the team is “100% TV” and notes that the addition of a VR mode down the line is unlikely.

The Astro Bot series first made a name for itself thanks to PlayStation VR. Team Asobi’s Astro Bot: Rescue Mission was hailed as one of the VR platform’s best games when it launched in 2018, leaving fans curious to see if the studio would develop a game for Sony’s newest headset, the PlayStation VR2. In an interview with Digital Trends at Summer Game Fest, Doucet confirmed that VR isn’t in the cards for its new game for logistical reasons.

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“We’re focusing 100% on PS5,” Doucet tells Digital Trends. “Rescue Mission was great fun to make. Every medium has its strong points. In the case of a third-person game, whether you work on TV or VR is radically different. This idea that we could add a VR mode is not applicable to this kind of game. It’s applicable to some first-person games like racing, but not for this kind of game. So our choice was to go 100% for TV to really have as many people as possible playing this game.”

That confirmation is another loss for PSVR2, which has struggled to deliver first-party games since its launch. Aside from launch game Horizon: Call of the Mountain and a VR mode for Gran Turismo 7, support from first-party Sony studios has been all but nonexistent on the platform. A new Astro Bot game felt like the platform’s best hope for a killer app, but that won’t be the case.

Astro Bot launches on September 6 for PS5.

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Giovanni Colantonio

Senior Gaming Editor

As Digital Trends' Senior Gaming Editor, Giovanni Colantonio oversees all things video games at Digital Trends. As a veteran…

Gaming

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Astro Bot rides on a PS5 controller.

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