Reports said that Sony builds incredible virtual worlds for its PlayStation games, and now the company is starting to dabble more seriously with building metaverse worlds, too.
It has been reported that at CES 2023, the company showed a brief look at a metaverse-y experience it’s building with the soccer club Manchester City. But so far, Sony seemingly is not bringing the same high-quality, must-play approach it’s known for to this soccer-focused hangout.
However, the experience, which Sony and Manchester City are calling a “proof of concept,” will let fans participate in activities at a virtual version of the team’s Etihad Stadium with their own custom avatars. In clips from an official video, virtual avatars run around the stadium and on the field itself, occasionally dancing and celebrating together.
The report said that avatars, 3D images, and “other expressions unique to the metaverse” will let players communicate “in a new way,” Nami Iwamoto, a senior product planner at Sony, said during the company’s CES 2023 keynote.
Likewise, Sony’s proof of concept also features virtual recreations of big highlights from multiple angles, including from the perspective of individual players. One impressive clip is from the point of view of the goalkeeper as they try to keep track of the ball among a scrum of players.
The digital player recreations aren’t quite as impressive as things like the Luka Dončić MetaHuman, and the virtual stadium and avatars are not nearly as high fidelity as PlayStation hits like Horizon Forbidden West or God of War Ragnarök. But given that Sony and Manchester City’s metaverse appears to be built for lower specced devices — one video about the proof of concept shows people with smartphones and laptops — it makes some sense why the graphics don’t match what you might expect from a console-quality game.
Thus, the partnership was first announced in November 2021. Back then, Sony and Manchester City similarly described the work as a proof of concept and mentioned the word “metaverse.”
Source: The Verge