Sony sells hundreds of VR patents to Meta
Sony has sold over 400 VR and XR-related patents to Meta, signaling a potential shift in Sony's commitment to the PlayStation VR platform. While Meta continues to invest in VR hardware despite recent layoffs, Sony's move suggests a cooling interest in the high-end console VR market.
Why it matters
This consolidation of intellectual property highlights the ongoing struggle for dominance in the VR/XR hardware space and suggests a potential market contraction for console-based virtual reality.
It's easy to forget that Sony launched a fancy, expensive VR headset for PlayStation 5 just a few years ago. It's seemingly only going to get easier going forward.That's because Sony just sold 419 VR-and-XR-related patents to Meta, per a report from ZDNet Korea. 43 of those were filed in the United States alone, and they include patents for things like head-mounted displays. It's unclear what exactly this means for Sony's future VR efforts, but doing this just three and a half years after the launch of PlayStation VR 2 (amidst product shortages, per GamesRadar) suggests that the company isn't especially interested in making another headset anytime soon. It should be noted that PSVR2 has not been officially discontinued, even if it has been difficult to find in stock recently.
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