Edge is reporting that Sony is indeed developing an Oculus Rift competitor and plans on lifting the lid on it next Tuesday at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. (We’ll be there with bells on.) This news comes to us by the same wings it usually does: anonymous developers blabbing about hot prototypes and privy info. They claim that the new tech is on par with the new, Crystal Cove version of the Rift. 

The question is: how does this technological shift by Sony impact the future of virtual reality. Edge thinks that “it represents [its] greatest hope,” and to be sure it loans further legitimacy to the movement, which isn’t exactly grassroots to begin with. There are already big names with deep pockets industrywide that want to make virtual reality, um, a reality, Valve and CCP and John Carmack among them. Sony has also, of course, dabbled in augmented reality, motion wand controllers, QR readers, and so on, none of which really panned out for them. Still, it’s pretty exciting.