Star Wars Battlefront Rogue One: X-wing VR Mission

Star Wars Battlefront Rogue One: X-wing VR Mission
Information
VR/AR	Virtual Reality
Developer	Criterion Games
Publisher	Electronic Arts
Platform	PlayStation VR
Device	PlayStation VR
Operating System	PlayStation 4
Type	Game
Genre	Shooter
Input Device	DualShock 4
Game Mode	Single-player
Release Date	December 6, 2016
Price	Free (requires Star Wars Battlefront for PS4)
App Store	PlayStation Store
Website	https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/product/EP0006-CUSA00634_00-BATTLEFRONTPSVR0

See also: VR Apps and VR Games

Star Wars Battlefront Rogue One: X-wing VR Mission is a single-player virtual reality space combat mission for the PlayStation VR headset on PlayStation 4. It was developed by Criterion Games and released by Electronic Arts on 6 December 2016 as a free add-on for owners of the 2015 shooter Star Wars Battlefront; the base game, a PlayStation VR headset and a PlayStation Camera are required to play it. The player flies an X-wing starfighter through a short mission tied to the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, fighting TIE fighters and an Imperial Star Destroyer.

The mission was Criterion's first released VR game. Its developers later described the comfort techniques they used for cockpit flight in talks at Develop:Brighton 2017 and at the VRDC track of the 2018 Game Developers Conference. According to Road to VR, it was the first implementation of VR in EA's Frostbite engine, and EA's Motive Studio drew on it when building Star Wars: Squadrons.

Reviewed 15 October 2026. Title, developer, publisher, E3 showing, August 2016 rename, release date, price, requirements and store details, gameplay description, Criterion development talks and quotes, the Frostbite and Squadrons connection, and the Game Informer, TechRadar, Thumbsticks, UploadVR, PPE.pl and Metacritic reception checked against each cited source. About review dates.

Gameplay

The PlayStation Store listing describes the add-on as 360-degree space combat from the cockpit of an X-wing, in which the player joins a squadron on a jump through hyperspace to rescue a ship in distress during a mission for the Rebellion. In UploadVR's hands-on, the experience opened on a menu with an AT-AT walker crossing the scene, then placed the player in a garage area with the X-wing and an R2 unit, where the player could teleport between viewpoints before boarding. Inside the cockpit some controls are interactive, including the targeting computer. TechRadar noted that the player can inspect the dashboard by turning their head and press any button that lights up with the controller's X button.

The mission itself responds to a distress call in Imperial territory. The player flies through an asteroid field, meets a U-wing and then fights TIE fighters and a Star Destroyer. The player steers with the DualShock 4 while looking around the cockpit freely with the headset. TechRadar wrote that the controls largely match the standard flight controls of Star Wars Battlefront and that roll control was removed, which it linked to fewer nauseous moments. TechRadar put the length at "only 20 or so minutes" for a single mission. At the end, a scoreboard with statistics and bonus achievements encourages replays.

Development

Criterion Games, the EA studio in the United Kingdom known for the Burnout series, led development. Producer James Svensson told PlayStation.Blog that the team used the Frostbite engine together with rendering technology from across EA, and that it worked with Lucasfilm to connect the mission to Rogue One, which is set in the same period as the base game. UploadVR reported in December 2016 that Criterion had made nearly 50 VR titles in-house before this release, and art director Kieran Crimmins described the output of the studio's hackathons as a "smorgasbord of experiments".

At Develop:Brighton 2017, Svensson and Crimmins described the comfort problems the team faced. Svensson said that the standard Battlefront flight handling, which "has a lot of auto-roll", was "incredibly nauseating" in VR. The team split each steering input into three linked stages: the on-screen reticle moves first, then the chassis, then the X-wing itself, which gives the player time to anticipate the turn. For the arrival of the Star Destroyer, a scene modeled on the opening of the first Star Wars film, the level keeps the rescue objective a short distance ahead of the player, a Rebel corvette acts as a focal point and the AI ships are steered toward it. The Star Destroyer then destroys the corvette, and the player's ship is disabled for a moment so that the sense of being pulled backward has a reason inside the story.

Criterion staff gave two talks on the project at the VRDC track of the Game Developers Conference. At VRDC 2017, Jay Steen covered its sound design, including a self-voice for the player, fully spatialized combat sound and the use of the series' music in VR. At VRDC 2018, Crimmins and game designer Mark Bridges presented a retrospective; the session description says the team was "blown away by the tearful reactions" when players first tried an early build.

In June 2020, Road to VR reported that EA's Motive Studio took learnings from the VR mission and from the Starfighter Assault mode of Star Wars Battlefront at the start of development on Star Wars: Squadrons. Citing an interview the game's creative director, Ian Frazier, gave to GameSpot, it quoted him as saying that without Criterion's work "this would have been a whole lot harder for us to build."

Release

The mission was first shown as a short teaser at EA's E3 2016 press event and then in gameplay footage during Sony's E3 press conference on 13 June 2016, where TechRaptor reported it as Star Wars Battlefront: X-Wing VR Mission. In August 2016 it was renamed to tie it to Rogue One; the renamed mission was presented at Gamescom that month. Its release date was announced on 18 November 2016, together with that of the Rogue One: Scarif expansion for the base game.

Date	Event
13 June 2016	Shown at E3 2016 as Star Wars Battlefront: X-Wing VR Mission
16 August 2016	Renamed Star Wars Battlefront Rogue One: X-wing VR Mission; confirmed as free for owners of Star Wars Battlefront with PlayStation VR
19 October 2016	Confirmed for a holiday 2016 release on PlayStation VR
18 November 2016	Release date of 6 December announced
6 December 2016	Released on PlayStation Store for PlayStation 4 with PlayStation VR, free

The add-on is exclusive to PlayStation VR and supports one player, DualShock 4 vibration and Remote Play. As of October 2026, the UK PlayStation Store still lists it as a free download with a release date of 6 December 2016.

Criterion went on to develop the space combat for the sequel, Star Wars Battlefront II (2017). Asked in September 2017 whether that game would have any VR options, Criterion's Matt Webster replied: "There is no VR."

Reception

Metacritic lists the add-on with no Metascore. In a preview from Gamescom 2016, Game Informer's Mike Futter wrote that he wanted "a full game of this", while warning readers not to expect "a technical X-Wing experience", since the controls come from Battlefront and the escort mission "feels like it's on flexible rails".

TechRadar's Gerald Lynch called it "the best virtual reality experience I've had". He said its quality "could easily have justified a small price tag", and credited the X-wing's long nose, which gives a fixed point of reference, along with the handling, for preventing "too many nauseous moments". Daniel New of Thumbsticks called it "the most comfortable, yet exciting, VR game I have experienced by some distance" and pointed to its gradual learning curve and the way the game discreetly takes control to frame the Star Destroyer scene. In UploadVR's pre-release hands-on, Sharon Coone reported no VR sickness but found the mission relatively short.

The Polish site PPE.pl was more critical. Its reviewer found that the first minutes in the cockpit were impressive, but criticized the reduced texture quality in VR, cockpit buttons that mostly do nothing and mechanics it found shallow, and concluded that, among the many strong games on Sony's hardware, the X-wing flight was at best a not especially attractive curiosity.

See also

• Star Wars: Squadrons
• Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Jackal Assault VR Experience
• EVE: Valkyrie
• Simulator sickness