Vision Pro Gains Official Support for Sony’s PSVR2 Controllers
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Today’s holiday refresh of the Apple Store may not have brought any new Apple products, but the company added a significant third-party accessory to its shelves today: Sony’s PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers.
The virtual reality controllers arrive at the Apple Store only weeks after Apple unveiled its updated M5-powered Vision Pro headset, signaling a new phase in Apple’s push to make its spatial platform appealing to gamers.
We first heard rumors of an Apple-Sony partnership last December, when Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Sony was working on adding the necessary software support to visionOS while Apple was courting third-party developers to build VR games that could take advantage of the new integration.
In fact, welcoming the PSVR2 controllers into the fold was considered key to getting more developers to sign on, as Apple’s initial decision to stick solely with hand gestures and eye movements was reportedly one reason why many game developers gave the platform a hard pass — although, to be fair, gaming wasn’t considered a priority when the headset was in development.
Apple also optimistically expected that the iPhone’s gravitational pull would extend to its new spatial computing platform — that game studios like Capcom and Ubisoft, who had eagerly ported their AAA titles to Apple’s mobile devices, would be eager to do the same for the Vision Pro.
While some sources expected the integration to be announced by the end of last year, it wasn’t until Apple unveiled visionOS 26 at its June Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that it publicly announced spatial controller support — and that it would soon begin selling them.
In this case, “soon” turned out to be November, but it’s also worth keeping in mind that visionOS 26 was only released to the public in September. Apple has them listed on its online store for $249.95 with the charging stand, and they’ll be hitting stores on Monday, November 17.
What’s unique about this partnership is that Sony has never sold the PSVR2 controllers apart from its own headset; Apple is now the first major retailer to sell the controllers separately. It also hints at the lack of traction Sony has experienced with its own system; partnering with Apple could help it salvage some value from hardware that never took off the way the entertainment giant hoped.
This effectively makes them the “official” gaming controllers for the Vision Pro, and while $250 isn’t cheap, it’s also not too hard to take if you’ve already spent $3,500 or more on the Vision Pro. “In for a penny,” as the saying goes.
Even so, we’ll have to wait and see how much this moves the needle for Vision Pro gaming. Game studios are in business to make money, and there’s a massive difference between porting Assassin’s Creed Mirage to several hundred million iPhones and developing it for a headset that has yet to sell a million units, which raises the bigger question: will Apple’s visionOS 26 changes — and its support for true spatial controllers — be enough to attract game developers to a headset that remains one of the most niche devices in Apple’s history?
