Sony has announced a new line of PC gaming hardware, which is compatible with the PS5, in the hopes of moving into the PC gaming market.
The new brand of hardware is called Inzone and currently includes two kinds of 27” monitor and three types of gaming headset. According to a report by The Washington Post, this hardware line has been in the works since 2019, with Sony attempting to break into the lucrative esports community. The name is said to refer to gamers being “in the zone”.
Speaking to the Post, Sony’s president of home entertainment and sound, Kazuo Kii, explained Sony’s decision, “We are entering the gaming gear industry with monitors and headsets at an exciting time, since gaming and esports have gotten even more popular over the last few years.”
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Sony has historically stuck to the console gaming market, often doing little to promote playing its games on PC. Customers used to be able to stream Sony games to PC via the PlayStation Now service. However, since the rebrand of its subscription services, players now have to pay out for the most expensive Premium service to do the same.
Despite this, Sony has slowly been seeing the advantages of courting the PC gaming market. In January, the PC port of Sony’s exclusive God Of War became its most popular game on Steam. It quickly overtook the 2020 PC port of Horizon Zero Dawn, which previously held the title of Sony’s most popular port.
Kii explained that he hopes that the quality of Sony’s products will encourage gamers to see the company as a key figure in the PC gaming market, despite historically shunning this section. “We are not saying we are not focusing on the PS5 users,” he said. “But because we are latecomers to monitors and headphones for [the] gaming segment, we believe we have a chance to catch up.”
Sony’s monitors start at $529 for HD and $899 for 4K, while the headsets range from $99 for wired, and go up to $299 for a set of wireless noise-canceling cans.
Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
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