Sony is pursuing new virtual reality technology for its PlayStation brand, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida announced at GDC 2014 today.
"The industry has grown by creating technological advancements for video game players," he said. "Advancements that people maybe weren't expecting or thought was possible." PlayStation, he said, is focused on "pushing the boundary of play," and "it's this focus that drives how we innovate and create the experiences we deliver to gamers."
Some of those technologies, like Blu-ray, have since become standards.
"Virtual reality is the next innovation from PlayStation that will [shape] the future of games," Yoshida said.
Yoshida showed a short demonstration of Sony's virtual reality technology, using a modified version of God of War seen from first-person, as well as some hardware prototypes that date back to 2010. Using a combination of Sony's own hardware, combining personal video viewers with PlayStation Move controllers, PlayStation engineers experimented with multiple prototypes.
Sony unveiled its VR technology efforts at a Game Developers Conference panel, "Driving the Future of Innovation at Sony Computer Entertainment," lead by Yoshida, senior director of research and development at Sony Computer Entertainment America Richard Marks and Anton Mikhailov, senior software engineer at SCEA R&D.