According to the announcement, since the November 10 release of Among Us VR, it has been played over 4 million times, with an average of 44,000 matches played daily. The game is also featuring a playerbase from all over the world, representing 112 different countries, and all in all, 89 million minutes have been dedicated to the game’s various tasks, sabotages and betrayals.

Among Us VR was first unveiled in April 2022. The game, available on Steam, as well as the Meta Quest and Rift stores, maintains much of the same gameplay that Among Us is famous for.

Players are put on a spaceship with various tasks laid out for them to complete. Some players, however, are tasked with sabotaging the rest of the crew while staying hidden.

Among Us VR features voice and text chat, and online play with 4-10 players. It also features cross-play between the various headsets and storefronts.

✨✨ SO ✨✨ MANY ✨✨ BEANS! ✨✨
over one million! can u believe it?!https://t.co/W7XeRUVyWW pic.twitter.com/hFDzBPVBe7

— Among Us VR (@AmongUsVR) January 24, 2023

While HTC hasn’t gone in-depth into revealing the features of its new VR headset, the company has revealed that it will make use of cameras on the outer shell of the headset for purposes of tracking and mixed-reality experiences.

HTC global head of product Shen Ye has also revealed that the new headset won’t be as competitively priced as the Meta Quest 2.

We’re in an era when consumer VR headsets have been massively subsidized by companies that are trying to vacuum up and take personal data to provide to advertisers,” Ye said to The Verge. “We don’t believe the way that we want to approach it is to compromise on privacy.”

HTC’s last major VR headset, the HTC Vive Cosmos Elite, was released back in 2020.

In a new blog post, the publisher confirmed that there would be an upgrade path from PS4 to PS5 but didn’t specify whether it was paid or free. Also, even though there are bonuses for carrying over one’s save data, PS4 saves won’t be compatible with the PS5 version. This means all carryover bonuses will be free for PS5 owners.

However, if you start playing the game on PS4 and want to continue on PS5, you’ll have to start from scratch. Concerning VR support (which is limited to specific sections in side content), it will only be available for PS4 and PC. “Logistical difficulties” prevent the PS5 version from supporting the VR experience. More details on VR mode for PC will be revealed in the future.

The good news is that those without VR headsets can still experience the sections in a non-VR fashion. Stay tuned for more details on the title’s release date in the coming months.

Among Us VR is going to maintain the same gameplay that made the original Among Us popular, having players take on their tasks as one of them tries to sabotage everything. The game will also feature voice and text chat, and online play with 4-10 players.

At launch, the game will include cross-platform multiplayer between Meta’s headsets and the Steam version, single or two-handed locomotion options, options for player comfort and safety, and localisation in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish (LATAM), Chinest (traditional and simplified), Japanese, and Korean.

Among Us VR was originally announced earlier this year.

Taking place in the same universe as Stellaris, Ghost Signal: A Stellaris Game tasks players with the search of the titular Ghost Signal. Players will get to meet mysterious aliens, fight planet-sized creatures, and take part in space battles.

Players can also take time off from their grand adventure to fill out their logbook with details about exotic creatures that can be scanned, or conduct research in multiple tech trees.

Ghost Signal: A Stellaris Game is going to be a roguelite game, featuring randomised maps with daily challenges and leaderboards, and a variety of weapons including heavy artillery and powerful upgrades like atomic missiles.

Ghost Signal: A Stellaris Game doesn’t yet have a release date. The game will be coming to the Meta Quest 2 some time in early 2023.

While the features for Meta’s next VR headset are currently unknown, Zuckerberg has stated that the new hardware will focus quite a bit on social features, with features like the ability to track facial expressions and simulate eye contact with users.

It is still unclear whether the new headset Zuckerberg is talking about will be a follow up to the Meta Quest 2, or if it will be a different product entirely.

This reveal follows a price increase for Meta’s current-gen VR headset—and also the most popular VR headset currently available—the Meta Quest 2. Meta raised the price of the headset by $100 recently.

According to the company, the price hike came out of a desire for Meta to invest in VR the way it plans to. “By adjusting the price of Quest 2, we can continue to grow our investment in groundbreaking research and new product development that pushes the VR industry to new heights,” said the company in a statement.

Half-Life: Incursion puts players in the shoes of Half-Life: Alyx protagonist Alyx Vance once again, as she is caught on the wrong side of the Quarantine Zone. Much like Half-Life: Alyx, players will have to make use of Vance’s wits, combat prowess, and support from Russel to make it back to City 17.

Half-Life: Incursion seems to be a more combat-centric take on the base game, presenting intense combat and stealth challenges for players to overcome.

Mod tools for Half-Life: Alyx were released shortly after the game’s release back in 2020. The mod tools, along with support for Steam Workshop, means that creators can create and distribute mods for Half-Life: Alyx quite easily.

Rumours from earlier this year also point to Half-Life: Alyx coming to PSVR2 when the headset launches. Prominent PlayStation leaker and XboxEra co-founder Nick Baker has stated that he believes that Alyx will make its way to the PlayStation 5’s VR headset as both Valve and Sony have already signed a deal to make it happen.

Half-Life: Alyx, and by extension, Half-Life: Incursion, are available on SteamVR, and any headset that can plug into a PC is supported, including the Meta Quest 2 through a link cable.

That is important to remember, because the point of this piece isn’t to decry VR’s existence, or to claim there’s no future for it. It’s very obvious VR is here to stay, as one of a multitude of ways people engage with entertainment. However, this growth and entrenchment of VR that we’ve been talking about has come from very specific kinds of VR products and paradigms – ones that are, in fact, entirely different from the kinds of high end VR tech that was originally peddled by so many eager entrants into the arena, back when VR was going to be THE future. 

You know what I’m talking about here – the growth of VR has happened off the back of standalone VR headsets such as the Oculus Quest (Meta Quest now, technically speaking). These headsets – the ones that are extremely cheap to buy and require nothing else to run or be used. You don’t need an expensive thousand dollar PC or a separate home console (another few hundred bucks on top) to run these things. You don’t need to wrangle a few dozen wires and connections and then be tethered to be able to use these. You just put the headset on and you jump into your virtual reality. 

Meta Quest is where the growth of VR has come from. It is overwhelmingly dominant in the market right now. In contrast, tethered VR has withered on the vine and died a slow, undignified death. 

You could argue some part of this is because no company has released a new tethered VR headset in a while, whereas standalone VR sets are a much more vibrant market. But ask yourself, WHY has no company released a tethered headset in years at this point, exactly? Oculus used to do many tethered sets. In fact for the longest time that’s all they did. Why did they stop? Why did Valve never follow up on the Index? Why have companies like HTC not released follow ups to their tethered VR products? With Sony you could at least make the argument they were waiting for the PS5 to be out and be a mature platform before pushing out the PSVR2 – but what about the others? 

PSVR2 is the elephant in the room. Sony’s next generation VR headset looks et to be a very high end effort – but it’s going to be tethered to your PS5. Which means, it’s not standalone, it’s not even wireless (though the amount of wires has been reduced to just one, mercifully enough), and it needs an expensive (and still all but impossible to find) console to even function. Sony has made the market for this headset extremely limited – and this is without considering how much the market for VR has changed to disproportionately heavily favor standalone sets. We talked about Valve earlier – apparently, based on teases and leaks, their own next VR set is a standalone model using the Steam Deck chipset as its base. Even Valve, purveyors of the largest platform for PC gaming, seem to be untethering their VR set and making it standalone and self contained.

Because ultimately you must consider it from the perspective of the customer – how many people exist who will want to spend $500 on a PS5, and then $400 on a PSVR2 (assuming it costs as much as the original set did at launch, even though it’s packing far more expensive tech) to be able to play… Horizon: Call of the Mountain? How big do you think that addressable market really is? The original PSVR, with some incredible killer apps and games, including exclusives such as Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Tetris Effect, and Resident Evil 7, AND after a price drop to $200 WITH multiple games and controllers bundled, AND while needing a far cheaper and more readily available console, sold 5 million units. Does anyone really think the market for a set like that, except more expensive, tied to an even more expensive console and one that is harder to find, AND with Meta Quest preemptively poaching some of the best development talent there is, AND with the market for tethered VR demonstrably having died out, is larger than that 5 million? Why? Based on what, exactly? Why does anyone think people will buy PSVR2 in any significant numbers? Why would they, when they can get a Quest for half the price (if not less), and get some of the best and most talked about VR software there is at the moment? And in a far more convenient package to boot? 

An easy way to counter these problems would be to have many must have exclusives that induce purchases. Fair enough, that’s a proven technique. But what developer making VR games would want to make their game exclusive to a platform with such poor commercial prospects? They’re a business, not a charity, after all. What reason do they have to not put their game on Meta as well? And if that game is available on Meta, what reason do you have to get a PSVR2 for it?

Sony could of course develop its own first party software for it. But only Sony’s flagship tentpole games have system selling ability – in other words, a God of War or Naughty Dog game being exclusive to a platform could sell that platform to the masses. Do you think there is even a snowball’s chance in hell that the next mainline God of War or Uncharted game will be a PSVR2 exclusive? Not just ALSO be on PSVR2 (since the rumors currently say Sony is looking at developing hybrid games, as in games that are for PS5 and VR2 alike). They need to be exclusive, otherwise you are once more counting on dozens of millions of people caring enough about some extra immersion to want to spend literally hundreds of dollars on it. Do you think enough people like that exist? They don’t. Which means the games need to be exclusive. Do you think Sony will make their biggest games exclusive to PSVR2? Right now they won’t even make them exclusive to PS5, their flagship console, because those games are so expensive to make, cross gen is the only way to recoup costs. 

And even if that hadn’t been the case (which it is, but in a hypothetical timeline where it wasn’t), what part of Sony’s history as a platform holder shows us that they have any interest in diverting their top games and talent to anything but their flagship console? You remember the support Sony gave the PS Vita or even the original PSVR as well as I do, I’m sure. And don’t get me wrong, there were many incredible games from Sony on both platforms. This isn’t about quality. This is about the fact that anything less than Sony’s biggest games being made exclusive to PSVR2 won’t sell the PSVR2, given all the challenges it faces. And Sony will never make its biggest tentpoles exclusive to VR. 

Which brings us back to the original point – PSVR2, launching in a difficult market with conditions stacked against it. It’s hard to see it having much of a future relative to standalone sets such as Quest 2, or the rumored Valve Deckard. 

And that’s the thing – VR absolutely has a future, and it is going to be a very bright future at that. But it’s not a future where it has to be tethered to additional expensive tech, with all the costs and hassles that entails, to even function. It’s a future where VR is going to be standalone. Its own thing. The market has spoken. The device manufacturers have spoken. Sony’s PSVR2 may end up being an admirable and premium effort – but there’s a possibility it’ll end up being a product out of time, and with not enough of a market to truly sell to. 

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

As announced today at the Facebook Connect, a VR version of the game will come to the Oculus Quest 2, which is the latest wireless headset from the company (now being rebranded as Meta). Unfortunately, no details were given about when to expect it or no footage to give an idea of what that may look like.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a classic from that era reimagined for the Oculus Quest 2 as Facebook/Meta partnered with Capcom to release a VR re-release of Resident Evil 4, so it seems this could be a trend. We’ll keep you updated as more information comes out.

While virtual reality has not quite caught on like many expected it to, there still is a dedicated market to the tech. Two of the biggest drivers of it so far has been Sony with their PSVR, and Facebook with their Oculus branch that has specialized in VR and have released multiple headsets on both the low and high end. Now, the latter has a showcase of what’s coming next.

The company announced on their official blog that the first ever Oculus Gaming Showcase will happen next week. Cloudhead Games, Ready At Dawn and ILMxLAB are all teased as being part of the event, as well as updates on Pistol Whip, Lone Echo 2, and Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge.

The latest Oculus headset was the Oculus Quest 2 that released last year, an update to the company’s lower end and most accessible headset that was completely wireless. We’ll keep you updated on what news comes from the event.