Sony PlayStation VR Headset Launched With Batman Arkham VR, Resident 7 Evil Biohazard And Other Games

Sony has finally joined the virtual reality mass market with its PlayStation VR headset global launch Thursday. The headset is priced at $399.99 and is expected to give a tough competition to the $799 HTC Vive and $599 Oculus Rift.

"To make sure that we are able to prepare and deliver enough units of PS VR and a wide variety of software titles to consumers worldwide, we have decided to launch PS VR in October 2016,” Andrew House, president and global CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., said in March 2016.

But it is not just the pricing where the PlayStation VR has an edge over its rivals. The PlayStation VR has been designed using Sony’s commercial hardware production knowledge and, therefore, it is equipped with a flexible headband that can hold it in place by stretching, retracting and ratcheting. It doesn’t have a band in the middle, which makes the user’s head fit inside the device comfortably.

Sony has also offered a PlayStation VR bundle for $499.99, which includes the PlayStation VR and Move controllers for room-scale experiences.

Unlike Rift and Vive headsets, users don’t need a powerful CPU and GPU to play the games, just a PlayStation 4 gaming console.

Here are some of the VR-based games for the PlayStation VR:

Battlezone VR: It puts you inside a moving tank and lets you control its movement, replicating combat situations.

Until Dawn: Rush of Blood: It puts you on the rails in a ride in a scary theme park at night. It tries to replicate a roller-coaster experience.

Wayward Sky: A point-and-click game that puts you in front of a model of the world and lets you play different characters.

Batman: Arkham VR: You play Batman, following the complete story about his parents, his origins and challenges from villains such as the Joker.

Resident Evil 7 Biohazard: It is a horror story set in a derelict plantation mansion in rural America in which players need to survive the horrors in the estate.

Research firm IHS Technology forecast in a report released this month that Sony will sell 1.4 million VR headsets in 2016.