PlayStation VR, like the rest of virtual reality, is not necessarily an every-day gaming device. Instead, I’ve found that I’m much more likely to break it out when I have visitors over, but that introduces a potential hazard in that I may not have the system’s Move controllers charged and ready to go.
But that’s where Nyko’s PSVR Charge Block has saved me a headache.
The company sent me this Moe-charging stand to try out the other day, and I set it up, plugged everything in, and forgot about it. Since then, I haven’t had a lot of time to think about virtual reality or the Charge Block itself. But that changed when my family from back home showed up to stay with me for the past week. Over the weekend, we decided to break out the VR headsets, and I was immediately worried that everyone would have to wait before we could play Batman: Arkham VR or London Heist while the Move controllers charged.
But then I saw the Charge Block. It had the controllers fully juiced up and ready to go. They were also easy to find. That made it easy to get the VR party going and to quickly jump into games that we might’ve skipped if the DualShock 4 was our only option. At the same time, this is clearly a repurposed PlayStation Move dock. It only has two slots for the Sony motion controllers, and it’s a bit of a disappointment that it doesn’t hold and display your VR headset like some other charging docks.
But when it comes to VR, having something like this to keep your Moves charged and ready to go is crucial because virtual reality is ideal for social gatherings. And if you aren’t ready to go, most people are going to want to pass on the idea altogether. But that didn’t happen at my house. Everyone got in on the action — even my mom had a go:
MomVR pic.twitter.com/vSgoYzkrVQ
— Grubb (@JeffGrubb) April 10, 2017
Nyko provided GamesBeat with a sample unit for the purposes of this coverage.