Sony to Reject Any PlayStation VR Game That Drops below 60fps

At GDC 2016 this week, during a Sony-sponsored talk on the development of its PlayStation VR headset, Chris Norden, the Senior Dev support Engineer at Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), revealed that any game for the new virtual reality headset that drops below 60 frames-per-second will be immediately rejected.

“Frame rate is really important; you cannot drop below 60 frames per second, ever,” Norden told the GDC audience (via Gamasutra). “If you submit a game to us and it drops to 55, or 51 […] we’re probably going to reject it.”

“I know I’m going to get flak for this, but there’s no excuse for not hitting frame rate,” he added. “It’s really hard, and I’m not going to lie to and say it’s extremely easy […] it’s really difficult.” Norden set down a final marker for developers: “60hz is the minimum acceptable framerate. Everybody drill that into your heads.”

Norden also revealed that PlayStation VR will aim to be inclusive of the new virtual reality ecosystem as a whole, and does not consider the hardware to be a proprietary ‘walled garden,’ saying, “We’re all friends; the VR industry is really small and really tight. The VR industry needs to succeed, and everybody inside of it needs to succeed.”

He also assured gamers that the PlayStation VR will not necessarily require large standing areas in order to play. “If you want to have a small area, if you want your players to be seated, to be standing, that’s okay,” said Norden. “Don’t feel like you’re constricted to just one thing,”

Pre-orders of the PlayStation VR have been booming, with Amazon stores in Europe selling out within minutes on launch day on Wednesday (16^th Marrch).