Sony and Microsoft go for VR and 4K gaming with E3 launches

PCs and game consoles get interesting again with new technology requiring beefed-up hardware

Sony and Microsoft are set to shake up the world of games consoles with new virtual reality headsets and devices capable of gaming at 4k resolutions.

Sony will become the first console maker to commercially release its own virtual-reality headset, a move that follows the success of several initiatives on the PC, and which indicates that VR is taking off, perhaps ahead of schedule - and not just for gaming, but for serious applications too.

Sony's PlayStationVR was finally unveiled at E3 yesterday and will have a competitive retail price of $399 or £349 - about half the price of HTC's popular Vive headset, which sold out when it was first released on Steam in April. Sony's offering will be available in October and the company says that there will be around 50 titles available at launch.

Sony has also talked up a so-called PlayStation 4.5, a souped-up version of the current PlayStation, which will more-or-less match Microsoft's plans that was also unveiled yesterday.

Indeed, Microsoft not only announced two new consoles at its E3 keynote yesterday, confirming the existence of the slimmer, 4K-ready Xbox One S, which will be 40 per cent smaller than the current Xbox. It will come packed with a 2TB hard-disk drive (probably a conventional disk drive, not an SSD) and offer both 4K and HDR (high dynamic range) video output, according to Microsoft. It will also, no doubt, come with a hefty price tag.

Microsoft claimed that it would feature a CPU with eight cores, more than 320GB/s memory bandwidth and "six teraflops of GPU power". The spokesman unveiling the details promised, "it's a monster".

The new consoles and associated VR headsets will not only drive the cost of VR lower, it will also familiarise people with the concept of virtual and augmented reality.

Engineering giant Aecom yesterday unveiled details of its implementation of Microsoft HoloLens for a number of architecture projects that it has undertaken, which are among the first VR projects in industry.