At CES 2025, Sony unveiled an idea that would let players into the worlds of PlayStation games like The Last of Us and see, shoot, and even smell the villains.
YouTube users posted footage of the Future Immersive Entertainment Concept, which depicts a big cube that participants enter, like the multi-person virtual reality experiences that are now on the market. However, this is not virtual reality because the cube is composed of extremely high-quality screens that surround the player with the game world.
Players are also given “interesting sounds” and even “scent and atmospherics with interactive PlayStation game material” to increase the level of immersion even more. As clickers appeared, the gamers in the video, who also carried replica weapons, would shoot at the screens, presumably inhaling the smell of rotten fungus and other transgressions.
The Last of Us: Sony’s Future Immersion Entertainment Concept
Unfortunately for fans, the demo does not offer a deeper glimpse into the cherished world because it was created utilizing gameplay taken from The Last of Us but modified to fit the Future Immersive Entertainment Concept.
Of course, even if it were, there are still many obstacles to getting this technology into the hands of the general public (or the public into it) because it is still years away and probably very costly. In the future, Sony might also use other brands, like God of War, Horizon, and others, to demonstrate it.
Other than a remaster of the second game and a remake of the first, The Last of Us has been inactive since the release of Part 2 in 2020. Since a multiplayer version was recently abandoned and developer Naughty Dog is concentrating on a new sci-fi property called Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, another entry might not be coming for some time.
