Simple yet ludicrously addictive, Myperbolic Magnetism’s Beat Saber is still in Early Access yet enjoying phenomenal success on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. While players are still awaiting a level editor which the studio has previously mentioned, the team has made an unexpected announcement, that Beat Saber will be available for commercial licensing later this month.
Location-based entertainment (LBE) venues have been growing in number and popularity over the past year, with studios working in virtual reality (VR) using that growth to license their videogames and make some money – something which is harder to do via the consumer market.
This is obviously an avenue Hyperbolic Magnetism is keen to capitalise on due to Beat Saber’s easy to pickup gameplay style. In a statement the studio said: “It has always been our intention to provide Beat Saber for audiences both at home and in arcades, yet our small team has been so excitedly heads down adding new features like the soon to be released level editor and a build for PSVR, that it took us longer than expected to create the version most playable in arcades.
“It is so important to us that you have the very best experience with our game wherever you play it. We couldn’t be more grateful for the positive response from the Beat Saber community and hope you find our delay to make earlier arcade announcements more a reflection of our commitment to quality than anything else.”
The plan is to make the arcade version and the legal commercial license available in the next few weeks, with the studio still to specify how commercial venues go about gaining said license.
Another feature still to be released is multiplayer. With the first version expected to be a competitive realtime multiplayer, where players compete against each other to get the best score on a specific level, this would ideally suit an arcade setup with multiple devices. So maybe this will all happen at the same time? As further details are released, VRFocus will keep you informed.