Sony shares details on Gran Turismo 7’s VR mode and 10 new PSVR 2 launch games

We’re just a day away from the Wednesday launch of Sony’s PlayStation VR2 headset, and ahead of its release, the company is sharing details on Gran Turismo 7’s VR mode and on 10 new games that will be available within the device’s “launch window.”

Let’s start first with Gran Turismo 7. As part of the game’s free 1.29 update, which is available now, the entire game except for two-player splitscreen will be supported by PSVR 2. “GT7 takes full advantage of PS VR2’s next-gen features — utilizing specially optimized HDR tone mapping, as well as foveated rendering from the eye-tracking feature (a technology that renders areas of the screen that the player is directly looking at in high definition), and dynamic 3D audio support, players will experience a whole new dimension of highly immersive gameplay,” Sony’s Ken Chan wrote in a blog post.

The 1.29 update doesn’t just add VR features. PS5 players will also be able to race against a “superhuman racing AI racing agent” called Gran Turismo Sophy. GT Sophy has already been able to beat human drivers, and now you can see if you’ve got what it takes to outrace the AI. (Though watch out for Sophy’s emoticons, which will show up in-game as you race it. Hopefully Sophy keeps its cool.) The Sophy races will be available from February 21st (today) until the “end of March,” and Sony plans to use feedback from the races to “improve the GT Sophy Race Together mode feature for future releases.”

As for the broader PSVR 2 games lineup, Sony now says that the launch window will include more than 40 games. Sony has detailed some of the games you can look forward to in this blog post, including titles like Another Fisherman’s Tale, Ragnarock, Sushi Ben, and Unplugged: Air Guitar. The list looks promising, but Sony is using the words “launch window” pretty loosely for some of these; Another Fisherman’s Tale and Sushi Ben have vague release timelines of “later this year,” for example.

The games will join a launch lineup that also includes Resident Evil Village’s free VR update and PSVR 2 ports of Tetris Effect and Rez Infinite. In our PSVR 2 review, we found the launch lineup to be underwhelming, but we haven’t been able to try things like Village or GT7 just yet. (I’m personally champing at the bit to get my hands and eyes on both.)

And we’ll be learning about more PSVR 2 games quite soon, as Sony is promising to show information about five new games arriving later this year at a State of Play on Thursday.