Sony released its long-awaited PC VR adapter for PSVR 2 this week, however early reports maintain some user don’t even need the company’s $60 adapter to start playing PC VR games like Half-Life: Alyx (2020).

A number of early user reviews of the adapter are echoing many of the same points right now: some graphics cards with USB-C ports allow PSVR 2 users to directly hook into their GPUs and play SteamVR games. All you need to do is download the PlayStation VR 2 App on Steam, no adapter required.

It’s not just any old USB-C port though, but rather a bit of an oddball that has been deprecated in more modern GPUs: VirtualLink.

Announced back in 2018 with the backing of both Nvidia and AMD, VirtualLink was meant to simplify PC VR connections by providing both power and data transmission through a single cable.

At the time, it promised to deliver a massive improvement over having to wrangle multiple connectors (USB, video, and sometimes additional power) and breakout boxes. Sadly, it was abandoned in later GPUs as the market largely moved away from PC VR in favor of standalone VR headsets such as Meta Quest.

The user reports you’ll see on Steam claiming they don’t need the PC VR adapter likely have one of several 2018-ish GPUs: Nvidia GeForce RTX 20 Series cards (Founders Editions) and AMD AMD 6000 or 7000 series reference design cards, as partner cards didn’t include VirtualLink.

While the list below contains possible candidates for VirtualLink support, the easiest way to check is to download the PSVR 2 app from Steam and see if you’re one of the lucky few who fits into that specific Venn diagram.

NVIDIA GPUs

• GeForce RTX 2060
• GeForce RTX 2070
• GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER
• GeForce RTX 2080
• GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
• GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
• Quadro RTX 4000
• Quadro RTX 5000
• Quadro RTX 6000
• Quadro RTX 8000

AMD GPUs

• Radeon VII
• Radeon RX 6000
• Radeon RX 7000

Provided you have one of those, some users are reporting right now some very frustrating issues with connecting PSVR 2’s Sense Controllers to Bluetooth.

Another caveat is PC support doesn’t include a number of features unique to PSVR 2, including HDR, headset feedback, eye-tracking, adaptive triggers, and haptic feedback other than rumble.

Roguelite shooter COMPOUND is finally coming to PSVR 2, bringing its retro pixel art style and arsenal of fun weapons to the platform starting this month.

Originally hoping to launch on PSVR 2 sometime in early 2024, Compound has done a bit of a back and forth with Sony’s quality assurance (QA) over the past few months, resulting in what notdead games described back in June as “an obscene number of dramas and delays.”

Now the studio, which has taken on an additional programmer to port to PSVR 2, says Compound is coming to the platform on August 13th.

Originally created by one-man indie developer Bevan “NotDead” McKechnie, Compound has celebrated its fair share of success since it initially launched in early access on SteamVR headsets in 2018, later arriving on Quest headsets in 2022.

At the time of this writing, Compound sits at the 6th best-rated VR game according to Steam and the 9th best-rated according to Steam250. On Quest, it sports a nearly five-star user rating.

If you want to know more about Compound, check out our full review of the SteamVR version. In it, we highlighted Compound’s overt love for the classics while taking on the single-player shooter genre with its own pixel art flair. Its focus on slowing down the action by making default gun handling a very deliberate experience felt clever, making the drip of progressive weapon unlocks really feel well-earned. We liked it so much, we gave it a resounding [9/10].

While you wait for the big day, you can also wishlist Compound on PSVR 2 here ahead of its August 13th release.

Arken Age, the upcoming single-player sci-fi shooter from Shadow Legend VR (2019) studio VitruviusVR, is almost here.

The team announce it’s completed the first large beta test with SteamVR users, and are currently sending out a second batch of codes, noting that a release date will be revealed in the “next couple weeks.”

With it, the studio also teased a new bit of gameplay, seen below:

Arken Age Update – For the past week we’ve been beta testing with a larger group of players on Steam VR and everything is looking great so far! We’re sending out the second round of keys today and hope to have a release date for you guys in the next couple weeks! #VR #PSVR… pic.twitter.com/MsPu3YaG1e

— Arken Age (@ArkenAgeVR) July 23, 2024

Slated to arrive on PSVR 2 and PC VR headsets, the single-player VR adventure isn’t just a sci-fi shooter; the studio says it will include fully customizable melee and ranged weapons, physics-based combat, boss fights, over two dozen unique areas, and a 10-15 hour campaign.

Here’s how VitruviusVR describes the story:

Your journey begins in Celestial Custodian’s Tower on the shores of the Bio-Chasm, a terraformed realm created to harvest Arkenite Energy. Its divine founder, the Grand Arborist, has ceased cultivation of your planet and every transmission sent to him has been met with abject silence. Uncover the truth behind the disappearance of the Grand Arborist, forge alliance with the Nara alien race, and take up arms against the usurper Hyperion & his legion of corrupted soldiers.

While we’re still waiting on an official release date, you can wishlist the game over on Steam and PSVR 2. Check out the announce trailer below, which includes a good bit of gameplay:

Windlands 2 (2018), the co-op platforming adventure from Psytec Games, is finally making its way to PSVR 2 next week.

Both the original Windlands (2016) and Windlands 2 have been available on the original PSVR for years now, but come July 25th, PSVR 2 players are going to get a chance to step into the high-flying combat platformer.

In addition to its new 90hz native refresh rate, adaptive triggers, and headset haptics, the game is coming as a free upgrade to owners of the PSVR version. Of course, this also includes cross-play with SteamVR, Rift and Meta Quest players.

You might notice that the original Windlands isn’t available on PSVR 2, however we noted in our spoiler-free review that it was “the true starting point” for the series, as it teases out the franchise’s unique grappling hook locomotion into a vibrant, story-centric combat platformer that filled with quests and boss fights.

Still, we’d love to see a similar update come to the original Windlands, although the studio says it has “[n]o plans right now I’m afraid, we’re all hands on deck working on our next game!”

Sony is getting ready to release tethered PC VR support for PSVR 2 this summer, but that may be one of the last meaningful things the company does for its increasingly latchkey VR hardware.

According to a report by Android Central‘s Nicholas Sutrich, Sony isn’t leaving any budget for first-party content.

Paraphrasing for anonymity, Sutrich’s source maintains there will be “very few opportunities for VR game development at Sony going forward.”

Citing a separate source with knowledge of Sony’s internal strategy, the report alleges only two PSVR 2 games are currently in development at Sony. The company hasn’t responded to the report at the time of this writing.

While PSVR 2 owners are still getting a number of highly-anticipated games this year, such as Skydance’s Behemoth, Alien: Rogue Incursion, Zombie Army VR and Metro Awakening to name a few, the headset has been missing out on first-party anchor content for some time now.

These require Sony’s funding and ongoing interest in VR to accomplish, something that seems to have faltered since the headset’s launch in February 2023. To boot, the list PSVR 2’s first-party content hasn’t changed in a year, which includes Horizon Call of the Mountain, Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil 4 Remake, and Gran Turismo 7.

Instead of showing off a slate of exclusive content to mark its first year anniversary back in February, Sony instead announced it was going to officially support PC VR games with the launch of an adapter box, coming in August for $60.

PC support won’t include a number of features unique to PSVR 2 though, including HDR, headset feedback, eye-tracking, adaptive triggers, and haptic feedback other than rumble.

The move comes in stark contrast to Sony’s prior strategy with the original PSVR, which pushed compelling first-party content through 2018 with the launch of critically-acclaimed platformer Astro Bot Rescue Mission. Notably, Astro Bot Rescue Mission was never updated to work with PSVR 2; meanwhile, its upcoming sequel Astro Bot is skipping VR support entirely.

Some of this no doubt comes down to cost-savings. Earlier this year Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan announced a wide-reaching layoff round affecting a number of its first-party game studios. This included the closure of Sony’s London Studio, known for VR action-adventure game Blood & Truth (2019), and reductions at Firesprite, the studio behind Horizon Call of the Mountain.

ASTRO BOT Rescue Mission (2018) is one of most popular PSVR exclusives to date, however Sony-owned developers Team Asobi are releasing its widely hyped PS5 follow-up Astro Bot without the addition of VR support. Don’t hold out hope for a VR port either, as the studio has now confirmed it’s simply not in the cards.

Talking to Digital Trends, Team Asobi studio head Nicolas Doucet confirmed the upcoming Astro Bot can’t (and won’t) ever be a VR game due to its unique development for TVs.

“We’re focusing 100% on PS5,” Doucet told 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.”

Speaking to Push Square, Doucet fleshes the decision on why it wasn’t developed with a hybrid TV/VR mindset:

“Certain games can afford to be hybrid, like first-person games, because there’s a closer similarity. But in our case, the design philosophy for both are very, very different. So, you know, it was a decision to expand on the world of Astro’s Playroom and bring Astro to the big stage. So from the beginning, that was really our focus.”

Granted, Astro Bot’s origins were first rooted in flatscreen from the beginning, with the character’s development stretching back to 2013 when PlayStation’s now defunct SIE JAPAN Studio released the bundled mini-game demo THE PLAYROOM for PS4, which was created to show off the console’s then-newly released PlayStation Camera.

Later showing up in 2016 on the original PSVR, Japan Studio released The Playroom VR, another bundled set of mini-games, this time tasked with showing off the headset’s capabilities.

This would eventually spur Japan Studio, where Doucet was Creative Director and Producer of Astro Bot, to release the full-fledged Astro Bot Rescue Mission in 2018. It’s been widely celebrated as one of, if not the best VR games to come to PSVR. In fact, we liked Astro Bot Rescue Mission so much, we scored the VR native platformer our first [10/10] in our full review.

Then, in 2020, just prior to Japan Studio’s closure, the studio released Astro’s Playroom, which served as a tech demo to PS5’s DualSense controller. Team Asobi would live on, headed by Doucet, while Japan Studio would be shuttered by PlayStation in 2021.

Notably, Astro Bot Rescue Mission has never received a PSVR 2 port, highlighting yet further the headset’s lack of backwards compatibility with original PSVR games.

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Maybe this “one for flatscreens, one for VR” pattern will continue on, but we’re not holding our breaths for now, as the studio is no doubt full steam ahead on hyping the upcoming PS5 exclusive, which we now know for sure will never come to VR headsets.

STRIDE: Fates (2023) initially released late last year on Quest, bringing with it a campaign to match the series’ hard-won locomotion mechanics that feel pretty inspired by parkour shooter Mirror’s Edge. Now, the PSVR 2 version of the game just got a big overhaul that hopes to address a lot of the complaints following its release on PS5 in May.

Coming nearly three weeks after launch on PSVR 2, the game’s 1.03 update is now live, including what developer Joy Way calls “planned improvements and added features that you, our players, have been asking for.”

Most visible of them is a major graphics overhaul to game, which features dynamic shadows, better lighting, increased resolution by 1.7×, reduced aliasing, and foveated rendering thanks to the headset’s built-in eye-tracking. Joy Way tossed out a graphics comparison video, linked below:

This also includes an overhaul of some game assets, which sees the replacement of AI-generated assets for custom-built ones.

As promised, the studio also packaged in its ‘Concrete Jungle’ DLC, which opens up 25 new missions to take on—said to be 3+ hours of gameplay—which includes a nifty new Wingsuit gadget so you can glide around the city.

Additionally, the update includes adaptive trigger feedback for weapons, which was previously only available for melee combat, and you’ll also notice that TV output has changed so onlookers get a centered picture, and not the left-eye picture previously outputted.

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You can find Stride: Fates over on Quest 2/3/Pro, SteamVR, and PSVR 2, priced at $30.