PlayStation closes another first-party VR studio, this time in Manchester

PlayStation has shut down their Manchester studio, the third UK studio to close in just four years.

After just five years of employment, the entire studio has been made redundant. In a quote given to website GamesIndustry.biz, Sony revealed that the closure is to “close it as part of our efforts to improve efficiency and operational effectiveness”.

Sony Manchester Studio is PlayStation’s third closure in the past four years and the third studio to be focused on creating VR games for PlayStation.

Back in 2016, PlayStation announced the closure of Evolution. In 2017, Sony canned the developers at Guerrilla Cambridge. All three of these studios were primed to exclusive VR titles for PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5.

With PlayStation revealing that the next-generation PS5 console will also support the current generation PlayStation VR headset, it would appear the company is more-so looking towards third-party developers to continue VR gaming on PlayStation systems.

While patents do describe a revised version of PlayStation VR headset for the next-generation of VR console gaming, Sony’s closure of numerous VR studios is worrying.

With Xbox denouncing the possibility of future VR projects despite Microsoft’s allegiance to Windows Mixed Reality, the future of console VR appears grim. While PC VR is finally beginning to thrive, we’ll have to see how long console VR survives.