Apple Vision Pro's sorely missed “feature” now available for purchase

The Apple Vision Pro hasn’t sold well for many reasons, but the company has finally addressed one of its biggest problems. Apple is now directly selling dedicated controllers for its premium MR (Mixed Reality) headset on its site, which hopefully means a more familiar VR experience for the people who own a Vision Pro.

PSVR2 controllers for the Apple Vision Pro

Some time back, reports began surfacing about Apple looking to partner with Sony to bring controller support to its headset. Apple would use Sony’s PSVR2 controllers, which were originally made only for the PlayStation VR2.

Support for these controllers was added to the Vision Pro with the visionOS 26 update this year. To completely streamline the process, Apple is now selling the controllers directly on its site.

Sorely missed on Apple’s headset

Lack of dedicated traditional VR controllers was a major problem with the Vision Pro. Apple wanted to do things its own way — in this case, a headset controlled only by hand and eye tracking — and didn’t make any controllers at all.

However, this meant that the Vision Pro was incapable of doing the one thing that most VR enthusiasts buy XR (Extended Reality) headsets for: playing VR games. Some games were ported to the Vision Pro, relying on its tracking hardware, but most games could not be played.

This was, for many consumers, simply unacceptable for the price.

Only one problem

Unfortunately, this is only one problem that the Vision Pro has. Its biggest drawback is its $3,499 price tag, a sum of money too steep even for most hardcore VR fans.

Our Apple Vision Pro review found the headset to be an excellent piece of kit, but still not good enough to justify shelling that much for one. And, for a more palatable asking price, you can now get the Samsung Galaxy XR, which is basically the same thing but better in some aspects.

While it’s definitely a pleasant surprise to finally have dedicated controller support for the Vision Pro, Apple isn’t really putting as much effort into its headset as it could. The company didn’t budge on the price tag with the new M5 Vision Pro, and has reportedly cancelled the more affordable “Vision Air” headset.

This is because Apple is going all in on consumer-grade AR smart glasses to compete with Meta, and possibly even Samsung and Google in the near future. But treating the Vision Pro like an experimental product isn’t really fair to the people who did buy one, in my opinion.

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