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It seems the long rumoured Sony VR HMD is finally set to appear at this year’s Games Developer Conference in March. But will Sony now beat Oculus to the consumer marketplace?

Sony First to Consumer VR Marketplace?

TechRadar reports that Sony have a special surprise lined up for us come March 17th. It’s long anticipated VR headset is now set to arrive at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco.

Rumours have been circulating about Sony’s first foray into the virtual reality market for months. A source recently shared with Road to VR details of a prototype Sony had shown developers. This source claims to be developing software for the PS4 console explicitly for use with the rumoured VR headset. The source claimed that having tried Valve’s proof of concept HMD shown at Steam Dev Days, the Sony unit compared extremely well in terms of performance.

We now hear from the same source that it’s likely Sony will beat Oculus VR to the consumer marketplace and release the Playstation 4 virtual reality headset before the Oculus Rift consumer version hits shelves. Indeed, if Sony are ready to demonstrate finalised hardware to developers at GDC this year, the claim doesn’t sound too far fetched and would mean they’d hit the stores ready for that all important holiday season.

Are the VR Platform Wars Due to Begin at GDC 2014?

Oculus have never officially stated that they would launch their virtual reality headset in 2014 and indeed have recently seemed cautious when questioned on the subject. However, early interviews from the Oculus VR team indicated that 2014 was their release target.

This position was later galvanised when photos of a slide deck from a presentation given by Oculus VR’s CEO Brendan Iribe show the company’s roadmap did indeed target their first commercial product (nicknamed CK1 / Consumer Kit One) to appear in Q3-Q4 2014. However, that same slide stated that we would also receive the 2nd iteration of the Oculus Rift Developer Kit (DK2) by the end of 2013, which didn’t happen.

Instead, as we reported recently, we may catch our first glimpse of the the new developer kit at GDC 2014. If Sony and Oculus VR do indeed choose to debut their new hardware at GDC this year, it would place the show as absolutely pivotal in the new dawn of consumer virtual reality and usher in the first VR platform war.

Rest assured, we are doing all we can to ensure that the Road to VR Collective are present at GDC 2014 ready to bring the latest VR announcements.