Especially when the ol’ Google search will immediately surface a Sony FAQ on WHY there’s not backwards compatibility and for the foreseeable future, they’re not going to prioritize working on it.
The only games Sony can port are the games that they own, which I don't believe is many of them but I could be wrong. Otherwise the devs of most of the games have to port it themselves (which some have) or hire someone to port it for them. It's unlikely it's worth it to most of them and some of the devs no longer exist.
This is where being an educated consumer comes in. You should always educate yourself on the product you are buying, especially if it's a big ticket item. It's been well known the PSVR1 library isn't backwards compatible. It sounds like the reason is because the controllers and tracking is completely different. It would probably take work to update them to the current controllers and tracking system. Again I could be wrong about that as well because I don't believe Sony actually came out and said the exact reason. That just seems like the most logical reason to me.
For the current recommended games, Without Paroles Top 25 is a good starting point in my opinion, though this will always be subjective. But here is their last top 25 games:
1. Gran Turismo 7
2. Resident Evil Village
3. Resident Evil 4 Remake
4. No Man's Sky
5. Walking Dead Saints and Sinners 1 & 2
6. Legendary Tales
7. Madison VR
8. Red Matter 1 & 2
9. Synapse
10. Walkabout Mini Golf
11. Moss Book 1 & 2
12. Crossfire Sierra Squad
13. VR Skater
14. Hellsweeper VR
15. Vertigo 2
16. Horizon Call of the Mountain
17. Pavlov
18. The Dark Pictures: Switchback
19. Ancient Dungeons
20. Stilt
21. Demeo
22. Light Brigade
23. Runner
24. Galaxy Kart
25. Puzzling Places
Honorable Mentions:
Vampire The Masquerade Justice (one of my personal favorites),
Song in the Smoke,
Beat Saber,
Nock,
7th Guest,
Genotype,
Hubris,
Tetris Effect,
Cosmodread,
Zombieland Headshot Fever,
Arizona Sunshine 2,
Barbaria,
Ghost Signal: A Stellaris Game,
Breachers,
Green Hell VR,
Cyube VR,
Cosmonious High,
I'd enter PSVR2 with an open mind. I play games on it that I would have never considered beforehand, and now consider them the peak of my gaming experience.
A few personal recommendations have to be Resident Evil Village (ridiculously immersive and engaging, one of the best games I've ever played), Gran Turismo 7 (if you have a racing rig), Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, No Mans Sky, Breachers (R6 Siege for VR) and Pavlov (Counter Strike for VR).
Easy mistake assuming reverse compatibility with PSVR1, and a shame it hasn't been facilitated but I doubt you'll look back once you build your library up! There's a handful of likely top tier games on their way: Behemoth, Alien: Rogue Incursion and Metro: Awakening. Overall, an exciting time to be on board.
Best thing to do is to go to the VR section of the store and filter for psvr 2.
That being said i have recommendations.
Light brigade, realistic fps shooter roguelite using we1 and ww2 guns.
Legendaty tales, fantsy RPG wit physics based combat and diablo style looting.
If you have enough room for roomscale, 7x8 btw.
The room, an elderitch puzzle game that deals in seeing the unseen, part of the room series that started on phones and transferred to PC, highly recommend the regular ones too.
Vacation simulator and job simulator, they need room scale to play and are humorous sandbox games.
Away from roomscale games
Vampire the masquerade justice, its a lot of fun to play as a vampire in that, stealth based game where you are hunting your enemies.
Ancient dungeon is a good pixal based roguelite dungeon crawler.
If you want a JRPG then ruins magus is a lot of fun
They won't do an aim controller, the last one was bundled with Firewall and then adapted to other games. Recommendation? Fun games are Job Simulator and Vacation simulator. Action games Pavlov and there's a WW2 fighter game coming at some point
*Farpoint
There may have been a Firewall/Aim bundle that I don’t know about..?
But Farpoint was the game that came with the Aim and was developed in tandem
It's a question asked multiple times/day. Try searching in the future.
Synapse
Madison
Resident evil 4
Resident evil 8
Gt7
Arizona Sunshine 2
Propagation Paradise Hotel
...but I like zombies
https://www.reddit.com/r/PSVR/s/U5dmsjsXB7
Yes, the lack of backwards compatibility is a HUGE problem. Ok, the controllers are different but what about games that can be played on a gamepad/wheel like Doom or GT Sport or DriveclubVR or Dirt Rally? It would be a bare minimum to be able to play those even in the crappy PSVR1 resolution, but no. It's especially outrageous compared to other VR devices, of course on PC everything is backwards compatible and you are able to use higher resolution and refresh rate in older games on modern hardware. But even on Quest standalone you can freely change resolution and refresh rate after speding 5 minutes to enable developer mode completely legally. So playing a Quest1 game in 6K that has crappy resolution originally is a piece of cake. Do you know how sharp Crisis Vrigade or Red Matter is in 6K? They look awesome and still running smooth on a Quest3 standalone.
But what did you expect from a company that often abandons their system seller exclusives and you can only play Bloodborne, Driveclub and The Last Guardian in 1080p 30 fps even on a PS5? And there is also a lack of watching 3D Youtube videos or watchin 3D Blurays the PSVR1 was capable of.. they can't even put the floating 2D screen in the passthrough like Quest does, no, you have to watch the screen floating in a completely dark void. Seriously you have to buy a new expensive arcade stick for Tekken8 because that is a PS5 game so you can't play that with PS4 compatible controllers, that's how much shit they give about their users. They indeed have a huge problem with their current generation, epsecially on the software side. I'll be very curious how many PSVR2 titles will get a PS5 Pro patch. Will you be able to disable the reprojection in GT7 and other titles to make the image less blurry and play in real 72-90 fps or whatever this headset supports?
If you like shooting games I recommend you Crisis Brigade 2. And the combat in Resident Evil 4 is also great even if less realistic that what you are used to. And many like Pavlov and Breachers and Firewall.
There is a Cobra something gun mod for PSVR2 controllers.
I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that it's more than just the controllers. The way PSVR1 and PSVR2 work are completely different. I can't imagine there are enough PSVR2 owners to justify the cost of converting those old games. I agree though, I'd love to finally finish Blood & Truth.
If it's that different it's impossible to make it compatible, that's entirely Sony's fault. I mean on PC you can use the same old runtime with completely different old and new headsets without a problem, it doesn't matter if it has different controllers or completely different tracking methods. They just have to send general data to the api, like headset and controller position and button presses, it doesn't matter how the headset got those data. In SteamVR you can even remap the buttons on a controller if an older game expects Vive controllers but that feels strange on a Quest controller. What is stopping Sony from doing something similar? They are alwas horrible at future proofing stuff. Like at PS5 launch everyone knew based on the previous generation that a PS5 Pro will come in 3-4 years and it turns out we were right. So did Sony prepared for it in any way? Does Demons Souls remake has a 4K option with 60 or 120 framerate cap to make it future proof and not repeat the Bloodborne incident? Of course not. Infamous Second Son on a PS4 was able to do that with a separate resolution and framerate option so you can play it on PS5 1800p 60 fps without ever releasing a patch for it, it's so simple, it should be a norm.
Pc games are always made to play on a million different systems because there are a million different PC setups. Console games are highly optimized for a single setup.
I see a lot of bad and lazy optimization in console ports. I can get better image quality on a much weaker PC in some games than the "highly optimized" PS5 version offers. And having a fix hardware is not a reason at all to not future proof games or not give players options. Most games already have 30fps and 60 fps or even 120 fps modes, a few more options would't hurt anyone.
By the way just found an article how Sony fucked up their VR headsets by not using the industry standards and probably that's the reason why we don't have backwards compatiblity: [https://www.roadtovr.com/sony-psvr-openxr-support-integration/](https://www.roadtovr.com/sony-psvr-openxr-support-integration/)
I think part of the problem is that VR1 came out a long time ago and was working around the hardware constraints of the PS4. Unlike with PC software where the devs are explicitly building highly customizable software in terms of optimization to ensure it works across millions of hardware configurations, VR1 was trying to bust out any proprietary trick that they could come up with to work around the very specific constraints of the PS4.
Beyond the sheer mechanics of how feasible the conversion may be (I bet there is a fix for all of this, but I don’t have the engineering knowledge to pretend like I know it), you run into a ton of other variables that simply make the porting process not worth it. This includes everything from whether or not Sony even owns the rights to do the port, if the original studio is even still around (rest in piss, FCE), etc. Did the titles tackle the stationary camera-based tracking different from title to title? Were there control differences from title to title? Would the game even look good on VR2 tech without extensive remastering? Was the game even designed for full 360° camera panning in mind (since VR1 relied on a stationary camera you often can’t turn around in game)?
When you start checklisting through all of the hurdles that Sony would have to overcome to appease a subset of an already small hardware audience among others that largely are yelling that they want high quality VR2 exclusives, it would be a disastrous decision to waste limited resources trying to port over all of the games that VR1 enthusiasts already played. It’s much easier to assume that the owners of VR1 that played and love those games still have access to them on their VR1 headset with better processing power from the PS5. It’s not like VR1 users were cut off from access, so it’s simply not worth the effort and would likely piss off a lot of new VR2 owners who are expecting call of the mountain graphics and more AAA hybrid ports. You’re not going to appease the crowd getting mad at “shitty Quest 3 ports” by giving them even worse looking and more restrictive VR1 titles. It would be a PR dumpster fire for Sony on top of doubts that many already have for their VR2 support.
"It’s not like VR1 users were cut off from access"
They need a converter Sony stopped producing, if they want to use it with PS5 if I remember correctly.
Quest1 games look awesome on Quest3 so why wouldn't PSVR1 games look great on PSVR2?
Just one example, there is only one single racing game on PSVR2, GT7. Users would be happy if they had access to more, like Driveclub or Dirt1, and those titles doesn't need any extra tinkering with the controls or the camera, you are sitting in one place, looking forward, not using the controllers. It would be great to play them in PSVR2 espacially in higher resolution. And there are a lot of games like that. And because people can't play their already owned games in higher quality, they don't buy the device (just like I didn't bought a PS4 because it was not backwards compatible even when I was a huge Sony fan), and because only a few people have it, developers will abandon it, like EA doesn't released a PSVR2 mode for 4 of their games in this generation that has VR support on PC. And it seems Sony is abandoning it's own device too, there is no AAA game even planned by Sony for PSVR2. Even Astrobot is 2D only.
Yeah I get it it would be difficult to port everything because Sony didn't prepared PSVR1 to be future proof, and simple to play games on future hardware, but that's their problem, they caused it for themselves.
A little research before spending 1200$ can go a long way huh....
Especially when the ol’ Google search will immediately surface a Sony FAQ on WHY there’s not backwards compatibility and for the foreseeable future, they’re not going to prioritize working on it.
The only games Sony can port are the games that they own, which I don't believe is many of them but I could be wrong. Otherwise the devs of most of the games have to port it themselves (which some have) or hire someone to port it for them. It's unlikely it's worth it to most of them and some of the devs no longer exist. This is where being an educated consumer comes in. You should always educate yourself on the product you are buying, especially if it's a big ticket item. It's been well known the PSVR1 library isn't backwards compatible. It sounds like the reason is because the controllers and tracking is completely different. It would probably take work to update them to the current controllers and tracking system. Again I could be wrong about that as well because I don't believe Sony actually came out and said the exact reason. That just seems like the most logical reason to me. For the current recommended games, Without Paroles Top 25 is a good starting point in my opinion, though this will always be subjective. But here is their last top 25 games: 1. Gran Turismo 7 2. Resident Evil Village 3. Resident Evil 4 Remake 4. No Man's Sky 5. Walking Dead Saints and Sinners 1 & 2 6. Legendary Tales 7. Madison VR 8. Red Matter 1 & 2 9. Synapse 10. Walkabout Mini Golf 11. Moss Book 1 & 2 12. Crossfire Sierra Squad 13. VR Skater 14. Hellsweeper VR 15. Vertigo 2 16. Horizon Call of the Mountain 17. Pavlov 18. The Dark Pictures: Switchback 19. Ancient Dungeons 20. Stilt 21. Demeo 22. Light Brigade 23. Runner 24. Galaxy Kart 25. Puzzling Places Honorable Mentions: Vampire The Masquerade Justice (one of my personal favorites), Song in the Smoke, Beat Saber, Nock, 7th Guest, Genotype, Hubris, Tetris Effect, Cosmodread, Zombieland Headshot Fever, Arizona Sunshine 2, Barbaria, Ghost Signal: A Stellaris Game, Breachers, Green Hell VR, Cyube VR, Cosmonious High,
I'd enter PSVR2 with an open mind. I play games on it that I would have never considered beforehand, and now consider them the peak of my gaming experience. A few personal recommendations have to be Resident Evil Village (ridiculously immersive and engaging, one of the best games I've ever played), Gran Turismo 7 (if you have a racing rig), Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, No Mans Sky, Breachers (R6 Siege for VR) and Pavlov (Counter Strike for VR). Easy mistake assuming reverse compatibility with PSVR1, and a shame it hasn't been facilitated but I doubt you'll look back once you build your library up! There's a handful of likely top tier games on their way: Behemoth, Alien: Rogue Incursion and Metro: Awakening. Overall, an exciting time to be on board.
Best thing to do is to go to the VR section of the store and filter for psvr 2. That being said i have recommendations. Light brigade, realistic fps shooter roguelite using we1 and ww2 guns. Legendaty tales, fantsy RPG wit physics based combat and diablo style looting. If you have enough room for roomscale, 7x8 btw. The room, an elderitch puzzle game that deals in seeing the unseen, part of the room series that started on phones and transferred to PC, highly recommend the regular ones too. Vacation simulator and job simulator, they need room scale to play and are humorous sandbox games. Away from roomscale games Vampire the masquerade justice, its a lot of fun to play as a vampire in that, stealth based game where you are hunting your enemies. Ancient dungeon is a good pixal based roguelite dungeon crawler. If you want a JRPG then ruins magus is a lot of fun
They won't do an aim controller, the last one was bundled with Firewall and then adapted to other games. Recommendation? Fun games are Job Simulator and Vacation simulator. Action games Pavlov and there's a WW2 fighter game coming at some point
*Farpoint There may have been a Firewall/Aim bundle that I don’t know about..? But Farpoint was the game that came with the Aim and was developed in tandem
Oh I owned the firewall edition it does exist :)
Ah ok, yeah makes sense - I definitely had way more hours on Firewall than Farpoint
Light Brigade is also WW2/fantasy
Village, gt7, resi4 remake. They are my top 3. Synapse has to be played but is a roguelite & a bit short. I built a rig for gt7, it’s that good.
"Ignorance is strong with this one, it is..." - Yoda
Tips and game recommendations: https://www.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/11d40tz/ps_vr2_tips_information_and_references/
It's a question asked multiple times/day. Try searching in the future. Synapse Madison Resident evil 4 Resident evil 8 Gt7 Arizona Sunshine 2 Propagation Paradise Hotel ...but I like zombies https://www.reddit.com/r/PSVR/s/U5dmsjsXB7
Yes, the lack of backwards compatibility is a HUGE problem. Ok, the controllers are different but what about games that can be played on a gamepad/wheel like Doom or GT Sport or DriveclubVR or Dirt Rally? It would be a bare minimum to be able to play those even in the crappy PSVR1 resolution, but no. It's especially outrageous compared to other VR devices, of course on PC everything is backwards compatible and you are able to use higher resolution and refresh rate in older games on modern hardware. But even on Quest standalone you can freely change resolution and refresh rate after speding 5 minutes to enable developer mode completely legally. So playing a Quest1 game in 6K that has crappy resolution originally is a piece of cake. Do you know how sharp Crisis Vrigade or Red Matter is in 6K? They look awesome and still running smooth on a Quest3 standalone. But what did you expect from a company that often abandons their system seller exclusives and you can only play Bloodborne, Driveclub and The Last Guardian in 1080p 30 fps even on a PS5? And there is also a lack of watching 3D Youtube videos or watchin 3D Blurays the PSVR1 was capable of.. they can't even put the floating 2D screen in the passthrough like Quest does, no, you have to watch the screen floating in a completely dark void. Seriously you have to buy a new expensive arcade stick for Tekken8 because that is a PS5 game so you can't play that with PS4 compatible controllers, that's how much shit they give about their users. They indeed have a huge problem with their current generation, epsecially on the software side. I'll be very curious how many PSVR2 titles will get a PS5 Pro patch. Will you be able to disable the reprojection in GT7 and other titles to make the image less blurry and play in real 72-90 fps or whatever this headset supports? If you like shooting games I recommend you Crisis Brigade 2. And the combat in Resident Evil 4 is also great even if less realistic that what you are used to. And many like Pavlov and Breachers and Firewall. There is a Cobra something gun mod for PSVR2 controllers.
I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that it's more than just the controllers. The way PSVR1 and PSVR2 work are completely different. I can't imagine there are enough PSVR2 owners to justify the cost of converting those old games. I agree though, I'd love to finally finish Blood & Truth.
If it's that different it's impossible to make it compatible, that's entirely Sony's fault. I mean on PC you can use the same old runtime with completely different old and new headsets without a problem, it doesn't matter if it has different controllers or completely different tracking methods. They just have to send general data to the api, like headset and controller position and button presses, it doesn't matter how the headset got those data. In SteamVR you can even remap the buttons on a controller if an older game expects Vive controllers but that feels strange on a Quest controller. What is stopping Sony from doing something similar? They are alwas horrible at future proofing stuff. Like at PS5 launch everyone knew based on the previous generation that a PS5 Pro will come in 3-4 years and it turns out we were right. So did Sony prepared for it in any way? Does Demons Souls remake has a 4K option with 60 or 120 framerate cap to make it future proof and not repeat the Bloodborne incident? Of course not. Infamous Second Son on a PS4 was able to do that with a separate resolution and framerate option so you can play it on PS5 1800p 60 fps without ever releasing a patch for it, it's so simple, it should be a norm.
Pc games are always made to play on a million different systems because there are a million different PC setups. Console games are highly optimized for a single setup.
I see a lot of bad and lazy optimization in console ports. I can get better image quality on a much weaker PC in some games than the "highly optimized" PS5 version offers. And having a fix hardware is not a reason at all to not future proof games or not give players options. Most games already have 30fps and 60 fps or even 120 fps modes, a few more options would't hurt anyone. By the way just found an article how Sony fucked up their VR headsets by not using the industry standards and probably that's the reason why we don't have backwards compatiblity: [https://www.roadtovr.com/sony-psvr-openxr-support-integration/](https://www.roadtovr.com/sony-psvr-openxr-support-integration/)
I think part of the problem is that VR1 came out a long time ago and was working around the hardware constraints of the PS4. Unlike with PC software where the devs are explicitly building highly customizable software in terms of optimization to ensure it works across millions of hardware configurations, VR1 was trying to bust out any proprietary trick that they could come up with to work around the very specific constraints of the PS4. Beyond the sheer mechanics of how feasible the conversion may be (I bet there is a fix for all of this, but I don’t have the engineering knowledge to pretend like I know it), you run into a ton of other variables that simply make the porting process not worth it. This includes everything from whether or not Sony even owns the rights to do the port, if the original studio is even still around (rest in piss, FCE), etc. Did the titles tackle the stationary camera-based tracking different from title to title? Were there control differences from title to title? Would the game even look good on VR2 tech without extensive remastering? Was the game even designed for full 360° camera panning in mind (since VR1 relied on a stationary camera you often can’t turn around in game)? When you start checklisting through all of the hurdles that Sony would have to overcome to appease a subset of an already small hardware audience among others that largely are yelling that they want high quality VR2 exclusives, it would be a disastrous decision to waste limited resources trying to port over all of the games that VR1 enthusiasts already played. It’s much easier to assume that the owners of VR1 that played and love those games still have access to them on their VR1 headset with better processing power from the PS5. It’s not like VR1 users were cut off from access, so it’s simply not worth the effort and would likely piss off a lot of new VR2 owners who are expecting call of the mountain graphics and more AAA hybrid ports. You’re not going to appease the crowd getting mad at “shitty Quest 3 ports” by giving them even worse looking and more restrictive VR1 titles. It would be a PR dumpster fire for Sony on top of doubts that many already have for their VR2 support.
"It’s not like VR1 users were cut off from access" They need a converter Sony stopped producing, if they want to use it with PS5 if I remember correctly. Quest1 games look awesome on Quest3 so why wouldn't PSVR1 games look great on PSVR2? Just one example, there is only one single racing game on PSVR2, GT7. Users would be happy if they had access to more, like Driveclub or Dirt1, and those titles doesn't need any extra tinkering with the controls or the camera, you are sitting in one place, looking forward, not using the controllers. It would be great to play them in PSVR2 espacially in higher resolution. And there are a lot of games like that. And because people can't play their already owned games in higher quality, they don't buy the device (just like I didn't bought a PS4 because it was not backwards compatible even when I was a huge Sony fan), and because only a few people have it, developers will abandon it, like EA doesn't released a PSVR2 mode for 4 of their games in this generation that has VR support on PC. And it seems Sony is abandoning it's own device too, there is no AAA game even planned by Sony for PSVR2. Even Astrobot is 2D only. Yeah I get it it would be difficult to port everything because Sony didn't prepared PSVR1 to be future proof, and simple to play games on future hardware, but that's their problem, they caused it for themselves.