Sony’s Project Morpheus VR Headset Is Coming to the PS4 Next Year

The new Project Morpheus (Ben Silverman)

Sony hasn’t had much to say about its VR headset, dubbed Project Morpheus, since showing off a few demos at last year’s E3 trade show in June. Back then, the Morpheus was one of only a handful of VR products on the horizon, but in the past few months we’ve seen somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 tech companies throw their awkwardly visored hats into the VR ring.

Sony decided to go all in at the Game Developers Conference taking place this week in San Francisco, however, showing off a new “close to consumer” prototype and touting some pretty serious tech specs.

Crucially, it also tossed out a vague release window: The Morpheus will be available in the first half of 2016. There’s no word on pricing yet.

Sony’s Shu Yoshida shows off the Morpheus. (Ben Silverman)

Sony offered plenty of words about the headset’s new guts, however, and they’re certainly impressive. Project Morpheus now boasts a 5.7-inch OLED display with 1920x1080 resolution. It’s got a 120 Hz refresh rate, runs at a super-low latency (no noticeable delay between real-world movements and in-game action), and can handle graphics running at 60 or 120 frames per second. 

That’s a lot of jargon. The gist: It’s a beast.

Just as important, the headset is a lot easier to take on and off. This has been an issue with VR headsets — as a guy with glasses, I find that demoing these things often leaves me either squinting or with semipermanent marks on my nose — but the new Morpheus is surprisingly comfy. The headset supports weight on top instead of the front, so it isn’t in danger of sliding off your face. Better still, a quick-release button lets you slide the front visor back and forth. For the first time that I’ve used a VR headset, my glasses weren’t slicing into my face.

The device is Sony’s foray into an increasingly crowded field, but the Morpheus has the benefit of being attached to Sony’s PS4. That means it won’t require a blazingly fast computer to work (as is rumored to be the case with the Oculus Rift). The company announced today that more than 20 million consoles have been sold worldwide.

Sony is showing off four new demos as well. We’ll have hands-on (heads on?) impressions shortly.