Soon, Apple Vision Pro owners will be playing games using officially supported tracked controllers in their hands from Sony.
The controllers, of course, will be sold separately, as Apple was sure to note in its WWDC 2025 press announcement. The feature is coming to visionOS 26, set to arrive roughly one and a half years after the headset launched.
Though still gated for now behind a $3500 entry fee for the headset itself, as well as getting your hands on the additional hardware, direct support for PlayStation VR2’s controllers opens up a relatively straightforward path for porting the work of numerous VR developers from the default input system on Quest, PC VR, and both generations of PlayStation VR system. At least, it’s likely going to be a more direct path than building for a gaze and pinch hand tracking only interface.
Until now, most VR game developers have considered building for Apple’s platform a non-starter. That’s because of the combination of few players and the absence of both the haptics and low latency tracking provided by controllers like these. PlayStation VR2’s controllers feature resistive triggers and advanced haptics developers could use with Sony’s controllers for the first time in standalone VR, though we haven’t identified yet whether those features are supported yet. Still, many developers will be put off by the limited player base on Apple headsets, of course. Some, though, will see this as a major indication Apple is looking to create a real market here for future games in VR and mixed reality. Overall, direct integration of Sony’s tracked controllers starts to change the game for Apple and prospective creators.
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I recently tested Ping Ping Club on Apple Vision Pro and found a game that works as well as it can with hand tracking. Unfortunately, the title falls apart the moment you try to get competitive, and that happens because current generation hand tracking is still pretty limited. Third party manufacturers have rolled their own version of the open source ALVR software for PC VR streaming, thus enabling players to use the Surreal Touch controllers for PC VR games. This essentially offers a route to play a top-tier competitive game like ElevenVR streaming from a nearby PC.
A small number of highly skilled development groups like Resolution Games, Schell Games and Triband have been able to secure development agreements on Apple devices for exclusive titles featuring the company’s breakthrough gaze-and-pinch interface. In fact, Resolution just announced it would be making Pickle Pro for “training and competition” in pickleball on Apple Vision Pro with compatibility for the PlayStation VR2 controllers.
“Thanks to our shared physics engine and the deep data pool from our award-winning game Racket Club, Pickle Pro is shaping up to be the most authentic pickleball simulator and training app out there,” Resolution Games’ Tommy Palm said in a prepared statement. “All our bots are trained on real gameplay data—from beginners to pros—making them smarter, more realistic, and more challenging with every match. Without the thousands of hours players have put into Racket Club, the machine learning bots in Pickle Pro simply wouldn’t be possible. We’re very excited about the potential here.”
A Resolution representative declined to say whether other controller-dependent games in their library would be making the jump to Vision Pro.
Vision Pro owners, meanwhile, have used the brute force of open source to connect their PC VR games to Vision Pro. On the outside looking in, many developers with limited time to focus on different platforms, as well as cash-strapped potential buyers, await Valve’s entry to the standalone VR market, even as Meta forges ahead making big budget home-grown titles for Quest headsets like Batman: Arkham Shadow and Deadpool VR. None of these trends change because Apple suddenly supports an official tracked controller solution, but it does start to change what could be on the horizon.
I reached out to one of the developers of ElevenVR to ask them about the new Apple feature and whether it changes how they approach multi-platform development.
“We’d love to be on every device possible but there is a huge consideration to effort and time and people it can reach – which is why we aren’t on every headset possible, ” the developer explained over direct message. “If there is a hardware combo that can support the game we’d love to be on it if we have enough time to prioritize it and it makes sense to do so…as each additional platform takes away from others.”
The developer pointed out players have already requested a version of the game installable on phones so they can be used as a spectating camera. The dev says there’s no timeline for release of a spectator camera for iPhone, and was 100 percent clear that there’s no guarantee they’ll be bringing their work to iPhone or Apple Vision Pro. As the developer points out, it’s believed Sony sold more PlayStation VR2 headsets, which come bundled with the controllers, than Apple has shipped Vision Pro devices, none of which have controllers included in the box.
We’re reaching out to developers to see whether Apple’s latest feature changes any of their plans and we’d love to see some discussion in the comments below digging into the considerations at hand.
Overall, what does the VR market look like in about a year to a year and a half? Come Christmas 2026, what options do people have to buy headsets and what games will be available for them? And what will be the dominant input method on those devices?
It’ll take time to have an effect, but a lot of developers are about to realize the VR landscape has changed in a pretty dramatic way.
