Sony: VR Games Might Require Different Kinds Of Ratings

When I was a kid, nobody had considered the necessity of video game ratings. Now, we take them for granted because, well, they are kinda necessary.

But might we need an all new ratings system for the untamed frontier of virtual reality games? Sony thinks this is a possibility.

In a recent Digital Spy interview , Sony boss Shuhei Yoshida spoke at length about the potential of VR to create more intense fictional realities for consumers. He believes violence in VR could be more "powerful" than in traditional games and this could prompt a change in ratings:

"The power of the medium is so much so that, in the future, the industry will probably come up with slightly different ratings so that we can communicate to consumers what kind of contents are inside. It's early days but it's important, because we don't want to handcuff the creativity of developers. But it's a challenge for the future, as the media is so powerful, something could potentially cause trauma to people when they try that, because they've played something really awful."

This is only one of my many concerns regarding virtual reality, but it's nice to see the creators have at least considered the possible dangers. I wouldn't be surprised to hear about potential vision impairments as well; we may recall when experts said over-exposure to 3D entertainment could negatively impact children with still-developing eyes. What might VR do?

But anyway, Sony's PlayStation VR tech is slated to arrive next year and a during the Paris Games Week, we learned about several new titles .