Toggle sidebar
Front-page

Sony sells off dozens of VR and AR patents to Meta

Sony sells off dozens of VR and AR patents to Meta

Meta Reality Labs, the division behind the successful Quest lineup has apparently picked up a batch of patents from Sony covering VR and XR headsets.

A transfer of 43 US patent properties took place between June and September 2026 covering virtual, augmented and mixed reality headset tech that Sony filed between 2010 and 2022.

Neither Sony nor Meta has commented. But the PSVR2 has been widely regarded as forgotton by PlayStation and it seems quite clear that they are scaling back their VR ambitions even further now.

The PSVR 2, which launched in February 2023 at $550 USD has been generally considered poorly supported by fans, receiving less than a handful of first-party exclusive titles. Sony did start selling a PC VR adapter that lets PSVR 2 owners play SteamVR games on a VR-ready PC to offer them a little more value out of the headset.

Did you purchase a PSVR2? Did you have fun with it? Or do you think VR in gaming is dying off?

:arrow: Source
 
  • Haha
  • Angry
  • Wow
Reactions: ChibiMofo, SylverReZ, Veho and 4 others
Click to expand...
subcon959 said:
It looked like decent tech but I didn't get one because I knew Sony wouldn't support it.
Click to expand...
I so regretted my purchase. Thing wasn't cheap. I was certain that Valve would port Alyx to it but that never saw the light of day.

Resident Evil 8 almost justified the headset - that was fantastic however.

But yeah overall they really dropped the ball with it which is a shame as the tech is extremely solid.
 
shaunj66 said:
I so regretted my purchase. Thing wasn't cheap. I was certain that Valve would port Alyx to it but that never saw the light of day.

Resident Evil 8 almost justified the headset - that was fantastic however.

But yeah overall they really dropped the ball with it which is a shame as the tech is extremely solid.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I wanted to be proven wrong and would've been willing to get one when it was around £300 but a handful of games just wasn't worth it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: yoyoyo69
The last non-home console non-peripheral thing Sony actually gave a shit about was the PSP, everything after that has been half-assed and only worth investing in once the deep discounts hit e.g. Vita, PSTV, PS Move, and now PSVR.
 
Flame said:
Meta will buy anything shit-related to AR or VR.

mark zuckerberg needs his head checked even more so.
Click to expand...

Obligatory reminder that Zuckerberg set up Facebook so he and his friends could rate how attractive his female classmates were.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BigOnYa, lightwo and Flame
It's probably a good idea to sell because patents do expire after 20 years. Might as well profit off of it one way or another
 
I did say when that person recently suggested that we needed a VR Section here at GBATemp that Sony was abandoning the technology. As for patents, when someone holds one that you have to license in order to release your product, that costs you money. Conversely if someone else comes along, like Valve, and wants to do VR and you hold most of the patents, they'll have to license them from you -- or make patent-sharing agreements with patents they own. Having most of the patents in this field makes sense for whatever company wants to keep trying to make the technology go mainstream, which VR never will.

Sony never could get traction with it's weak VR offerings, and even Rich from Digital Foundary could never get his PSVR2 headset to work with his PC showing how poorly supported that crappy hardware was. Smart move by Sony, which has been making a lot of them recently even as the incels criticize them for the very same.

Now Pimax and Valve can make those patent payments directly to the scumbags of Meta and Sony can get back to what it does best: making live service games literally no one wants or asked for while the Switch 2 already has more exclusives after 16 months than the PS5 has after 6 years. 😂
 

Site & Scene News

New Hot Discussed User Submitted

Go to forum More news

Popular threads in this forum