Beat Saber was the defining game on Quest when it came to the company’s first standalone at launch back in 2019, making the infectious block-slashing rhythm game a real system-seller. Now, Meta says it’s cutting Beat Saber’s online services for Quest 1 later this year.
The Meta-owned studio Beat Games revealed the news via a post on X, maintaining that all multiplayer functionality will be pulled come November 2nd, 2024:
Dear players, to focus our development efforts on our next projects within Beat Saber, we will no longer support Meta Quest 1 as of November 2, 2024. The game will continue to be playable, but Multiplayer functionality will stop and Leaderboards might be phased out in the future. pic.twitter.com/h7Jefa3g75
In an FAQ detailing the move, the studio clarifies it will also stop releasing Beat Saber updates or customer support for the Quest 1 devices.
“If you want to access the PC version of Beat Saber on your Meta Quest 1, you can do so via the Meta Quest Link,” the studio concludes.
Granted, since Beat Saber and all purchased DLC is tied to your Meta account, it is transferable and playable across the company’s family of devices, including Quest 2/3/Pro and and Rift/Rift S—Meta cross-buy included.
This shouldn’t come as any big surprise though, as Meta announced last year it was sunsetting Quest 1, noting that no new apps will be able to offer support for Quest 1 starting on April 30th, 2024.
This comes as the company seems to be winding down support for seemingly everything but Quest 3, as a few notable developers have decided against supporting the 2020-era Quest 2 or 2022-era Quest Pro, including Alien: Rogue Incursion and Batman: Arkham Shadow, both of which are slated to release later this year.
Beat Saber, VR’s favorite block-slashing rhythm game, came to PlayStation VR 2 well past the headset’s February 2023 launch, coming to Sony’s latest VR headset in late May. And while Beat Saber topped the May charts within only one week of being available on PSVR 2, it seems the long-standing VR favorite is showing no signs of stopping.
In PlayStation’s June top downloads list, Beat Saber has made out as the top PSVR 2 download again. Here’s the full list, showing the charts across the US/Canada, Europe, and Japan.
US & Canada
EU
Japan
1
Beat Saber
Beat Saber
Beat Saber
2
Pavlov
Pavlov
Hubris
3
Job Simulator
Hubris
Kayak VR: Mirage
4
Hubris PS VR 2
Job Simulator
C-Smash VRS
5
Walkabout Mini Golf
Red Matter 2
Onogoro Monogatari ~The Tale of Onogoro~
6
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution
TRIPP: A New Way to Meditate
7
Creed: Rise to Glory – Championship Edition
Kayak VR: Mirage
Red Matter 2
8
Kayak VR: Mirage
Walkabout Mini Golf
Horizon Call of the Mountain
9
Red Matter 2
Creed: Rise to Glory – Championship Edition
Creed: Rise to Glory – Championship Edition
10
Swordsman VR
Swordsman VR
Job Simulator
Notably, PlayStation’s charts are based on PS Store purchases only, which means game upgrades or games bundled with hardware are not included. Beat Saber is one of those in a limited pool of games that offers a free PSVR 2 upgrade from the original PSVR version, so it seems new PSVR 2 users are jumping into the block-slashing action organically.
It’s no surprise Beat Saber has fared well on PSVR 2 for new players though, as by now the game is fairly synonymous as a great beginner’s title thanks to its ‘easy to play, hard to master’ gameplay in addition to not being nearly as involved as some VR games, many of which require some form of artificial locomotion.
Not only that, Meta-owned studio Beat Games has also wrangled a ton of music deals since the game’s 2018 launch to bring an extensive library of paid DLC to the game. This includes everything from legacy classics such as Queen, Kiss, and Lynyrd Skynyrd to current pop hits like The Weekend, Lizzo, Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, and BTS to name a few.
With such a sustained performance, it’s likely Beat Saber will continue its reign on PSVR 2 for months to come.
We expected Beat Saber as a day-one title on PSVR 2 when the headset launched in February, but it seems Meta had different ideas. Better late than never though, as everyone’s favorite block-slashing rhythm game is now available on PSVR 2 as a free upgrade from the PSVR version, coming alongside a paid music pack featuring the ever-iconic band Queen.
The Queen music pack is available across all supported platforms, including Quest, PSVR/2, and PC VR headsets, priced at $14.
It includes the 11 tracks listed below:
“Another One Bites the Dust”
“Bohemian Rhapsody”
“Crazy Little Thing Called Love”
“Don’t Stop Me Now”
“I Want It All”
“Killer Queen”
“One Vision”
“Somebody to Love”
“Stone Cold Crazy”
“We Are The Champions”
“We Will Rock You”
If you already own Beat Saber on PSVR, you can upgrade to the PSVR 2 version for free. This will also allow you to transfer any music packs previously purchased on PSVR at no extra cost.
Beat Saber (2018), the popular block-slashing rhythm game, has undoubtedly been a standout success for VR. Now a Wall Street Journalreport alleges the game has generated over a quarter billion dollars.
Citing documents viewed by the Wall Street Journal, Meta has allegedly generated over $255 million as of October 2022.
While not stated explicitly in the report, this ostensibly includes base game unit sales and DLC sales across all supported platforms, which includes Quest, Quest 2, the original PSVR, and SteamVR headsets.
Acquired by Meta in 2019, developers Beat Games have released a wide swath of paid and free DLC, something it can owe to Meta’s deep pockets which has allowed it to cut deals with a number of record labels and high-profile artists.
The Journal maintains the documents included another staggering figure: Beat Saber was played by 1.47 million active devices per month, making it one of the 14 Quest games to gross over $20 million out of the 500 available on the store.
Notably, Beat Saber has yet to make the leap to Sony’s recently released PSVR 2 headset, making it a fairly important holdout to do so.
Beat Games, the Czechia-based studio known for VR’s most popular game Beat Saber (2018), revealed it’s managed to generate nearly $100 million in revenue over the course of last year thanks to the block-slashing rhythm game.
Czech language publication CzechCrunch confirmed that Beat Games earned 2.3 billion Czech koruna in revenue last year alone, or around $97 million USD.
This places it as the top-earning game studio in Czechia, as it now sits above Bohemia Interactive (Arma, DayZ), SCS Software (Euro Truck Simulator 2), and Warhorse Studios (Kingdom Come: Deliverance).
It is crazy that 4 years since we founded Beat Games, it became the biggest game studio in the Czech Republic with growth almost 65% from last year. The team is "slashing" it!!!! and thank you all for amazing support!! https://t.co/PnZZrxKsVc
CzechCrunch indicates this represents a year-over-year growth of around 65 percent, as last year Beat Games reported sales of 1.4 billion koruna (~$59 million USD).
Profit is another thing entirely however. For comparison, Bohemia Interactive reported an after-tax profit of 616 million koruna (~$26 million USD) last year. Beat Games reported an after-tax profit of only 70 million koruna (~$3 million USD).
Bohemia Interactive acts as both developer and publisher of its own titles, which is likely why after-tax profit is so high in comparison to Beat Games, which was acquired by Meta (formerly Facebook) back in 2019. Founded by Ján Ilavský, Vladimír Hrinčár and Jaroslav Beck in 2018, the team now includes more than thirty members working under the Meta name.
With Meta’s deep pockets, Beat Saber has continued to pump out a steady stream of tracks to slice and grove to, which includes content from high-profile artists such as Skrillex, BTS, Green Day, Timbaland, Linkin Park, and Imagine Dragons, not to mention the Interscope Music Pack featuring tracks from the likes of Kendrick Lamar, OneRepublic, Limp Bizkit, and Maroon 5.
Beat Saber regularly sits at the top of the charts across all supported headsets now four years later, which includes PSVR, PC VR headsets, and the Meta Quest platform, the latter of which has no doubt been the key driver for sales in 2021 thanks to the release of Quest 2.
Beat Saber (2018), arguably VR’s most popular game, is celebrating four years since it first launched on VR headsets with free tracks that remix two super recognizable songs from the game’s first OST.
The new tracks are remixes of Jaroslav Beck’s ‘Escape’ and ‘100$ Bills’, respectively dubbed Escape (Tokyo Machine Remix) from EDM DJ Tokyo Machine and 100$ Bills (Camellia’s ‘215$-Step’ Remix) from Japanese composer Camellia.
Here’s a quick preview of Camellia’s remix of 100$ Bills:
There’s also a new anniversary themed environment, which Beat Games says in a blog post includes cakes and banners. Called ‘The Second’, the new level is a remake of the original OST 1 environment (aka ‘The First’).
Over the last four years, developers Beat Games was acquired by Meta (then Facebook) which saw a near-constant release of paid and free DLC. Meta’s deep pockets allowed the studio to cut deals with record labels which has seen content from high-profile artists such as Skrillex, BTS, Green Day, Timbaland, Linkin Park, and Imagine Dragons, not to mention the Interscope Music Pack featuring tracks from the likes of Kendrick Lamar, OneRepublic, Limp Bizkit, and Maroon 5.
The most recent release was the game’s Electronic Mixtape which brought tracks from Madeon, Deadmau5, Fatboy Slim, and more.
Available across all supported devices, including Quest 2, SteamVR headsets and PSVR, you can find both songs in the ‘Extras’ section of your song library.
With regular updates, DLC releases and changes to the game since launch, Beat Saber remains VR’s poster child. Read on for our updated Beat Saber review for Quest 2, PSVR and PC VR.
Years of Dominance
It’s hard to understate Beat Saber’s influence on the VR industry. It was one of the earliest success stories in VR gaming and became a catalyst for the now-oversaturated market of VR rhythm games. After launch in 2018, it catapulted itself into the spotlight as the must-have VR game for any headset owner and became one of the only VR-exclusive titles to gain brand recognition in the wider gaming industry. As starting points go, it was a good place to be in.
Perhaps more amazing is that in 2022, four years post-release, Beat Saber remains dominant as ever and has never properly faded from the zeitgeist. Meta acquired the studio behind the game, Beat Games, in 2018, but Beat Saber remains available on almost every major VR headset – Meta-owned or otherwise. It consistently holds a near-unbeatable position around the top of most VR store charts, as it has done for several consecutive years now. With consistent free updates and paid DLC releases, there’s now a wealth of content to work through as well.
Beat Saber 2022 Review – The Facts
Platforms: Oculus Quest, Quest 2, PC VR, PSVR Release Date: Out Now Developer: Beat Games, Meta Price: $29.99
Even the skeptics would have to admit that Beat Saber is still the biggestVR game in terms of availability, omnipresence and recognition, especially with more casual audiences. But a lot has changed since 2018 – not just advancements in hardware, but also our understanding of solid VR design principles.
The standard is higher than ever, so how well does Beat Saber hold up?
Surprisingly well, is the answer. But before getting into the nitty gritty, let’s cover the basics.
Easy to Understand, Hard to Master
Beat Saber is a VR rhythm game with an easily-understood core concept. Set to music, the player will use two ‘lightsabers’ – one red and one blue, by default – to slice through blocks as they fly through space towards the player. The colour of the blocks – red or blue – correspond to which lightsaber to use, while directional arrows on each indicate whether you should slice up, down, left, right or even diagonally. If you’re confused, think Fruit Ninja… but with music. In VR.
The blocks are aligned to the rhythm of the music – the more on-time and accurately you slice, the higher your score. Slicing consecutive blocks without mistakes builds combos. Missing blocks or making mistakes resets your combo and can stack up to result in a level failure.
There’s other twists as well – walls you have to avoid, bombs you can’t hit, double blocks or cross-armed slices – but overall it’s a conceptually simple game with a very high skill ceiling. Even though the upper echelon of players compete at an insanely high level, everyone can play Beat Saber – the large variety of music, modes and difficulty levels means it’s enjoyable for newcomers and experts alike.
Old Genre, New Platform, Same Feeling
Rhythm games are a popular gaming genre, no matter the platform. But not only does Beat Saber execute the rhythm game tropes well, it also exhibits an expert understanding of what makes a fantastic VR experience – especially impressive for 2018.
Beat Saber’s gameplay isn’t just addictive, it’s tactile. Every move you make lines up perfectly with your expectation for how that action should feel. In other games, actions don’t always align with the virtual world, like putting your hand up against a virtual wall only to realize that your physical hand falls through it.
There’s no such disconnect in Beat Saber. There’s cohesion and responsiveness between your actions in real life and VR, because slicing blocks is designed as an inherently weightless action. Your brain never expects feedback from your actions, so everything just feels right.
This unsolved hardware problem – generating realistic feedback and resistance against actions – is likely to stick around for quite a while. By avoiding the problem entirely, Beat Saber has positioned itself as a timeless experience, at least for the foreseeable future. Even across generations of different hardware, Beat Saber feels incredibly satisfying to play – just as much now as it did in 2018.
Games Modes, Accessibility, Modifiers
Compared to launch, there’s now a lot more on offer in Beat Saber as well. The music library has been massively expanded (more on that later), but there’s also several different game modes to keep you entertained.
The classic mode is Solo, the stock-standard high score mode that lets you play through any track you like, with many optional modifier options. There’s also now a multiplayer mode, which lets up to five players compete against each other for a high score, either in public or private lobbies.
A campaign mode does technically exist, but feels neglected and overdue for a complete overhaul – it’s not worth your time over Solo mode. An upgraded campaign with better structure and some form of progression might be interesting (and perhaps is on the way), but the fairly neglected state of the existing campaign isn’t exactly a huge loss.
Accessibility options and gameplay modifiers are abound in Beat Saber, which let you tailor the game to your needs and wants. You can enable different options to make the game easier, more accessible, harder or just completely different, adding a lot of depth for people who want to mix up gameplay or cater to specific needs.
There’s also special 360 and 90 degree levels that see you turn on the spot as blocks come from different directions – a fun gimmick, but nothing mind-blowing.
An Expansive Library
Given how big the library has grown since launch, Beat Saber’s music selection should have something for everyone by now, provided you’re willing to pay extra.
Humble beginnings saw only a few original electronic tracks included at launch, composed by Beat Games Co-Founder Jaroslav Beck. New free tracks and additional original music from Beck still arrive in updates from time to time, but it’s the paid DLC releases that offer the most exciting selections, featuring some prominent and legendary artists – Linkin Park, Fall Out Boy, BTS, Green Day, Lady Gaga, Panic! At The Disco, Billie Eilish, Imagine Dragons and Skrillex, to name a few.
Each pack brings with it a unique feel, perfectly crafted to capture the spirit of the featured artist. It makes each pack feel truly hand-crafted and brings much-needed variety across the library. The only downside for new players will be the cost – when you add DLC to the cost of the base game, things could start to get a bit pricey.
However, the expansion of Beat Saber’s music selection has also had an effect on consistency. The skill ceiling of Beat Saber players has increased dramatically in the last few years, as has the style and variety of track mapping. While the developers have evolved the game’s mapping, it’s now clear that the difficult labels – Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert, Expert+ – can mean completely different things from one track to another. What was considered Expert in 2018, for example, feels like a walk in the park compared to an Expert map released in 2022.
Room for Improvement
Outside of the actual gameplay, parts of Beat Saber’s user experience are starting to show their age. The entire menu system – large, flat and floating panels, with a point-and-click cursor attached to each controller – might have been serviceable in 2018, but now feels clunky and unintuitive. There’s been lots of innovation in intuitive user experience in virtual reality, but Beat Saber has not kept pace.
The same can be said for the game’s visuals. While overall the game looks great on most platforms, it also doesn’t feel like the best possible visual presentation, especially on Quest hardware. Other releases have really pushed Quest’s standalone hardware to the limit, delivering stunning visuals. It’s hard to believe Beat Saber couldn’t do a bit more to impress in this day and age.
Admittedly, the newer DLC and OST releases feature environments that are way more visually interesting. But if anything, this only contributes to the aforementioned feeling of consistency – some levels look breathtaking, while others now look incredibly dated and barebones.
All of these minor issues are a result of the piecemeal approach taken by Beat Games, adding and changing elements slowly but consistently, bit by bit. While it’s an approach that has served Beat Saber well until now, it’s also segmenting the game and beginning to make it feel less like one cohesive package.
It would be nice to see this addressed, preferably in one big drastic update. Even a full on sequel – Beat Saber 2 – might be the best option, providing a polished and ground-up rework of the core game, while introducing some new elements and transitioning existing players over with legacy map and DLC support.
Beat Saber Review 2022 – Final Verdict
For any new headset owner, Beat Saber remains an essential purchase. Even if the genre is not traditionally your style, the game holds such an esteemed place in VR history and remains completely relevant to modern audiences, exemplifying sublime gameplay that puts intelligent VR design first.
Yes, parts of the experience are starting to feel ever so slightly outdated, but those are very minor gripes for what is otherwise a seminal VR game. Nothing has yet to penetrate the virtual reality zeitgeist quite like Beat Saber. If you have a headset, you have to try it. It’s as simple as that.
UploadVR recently changed its review guidelines, and this is one of our new Essential review labels. You can read more about our review guidelines here.
This review was conducted primarily on the Quest 2 version of the game, but applies to all platforms. What did you make of our Beat Saber review? Let us know in the comments below!
Beat Saber, the popular block-slashing rhythm game, is getting a new paid music pack soon that will feature eight tracks from Fall Out Boy.
The American rock band announced the news via Twitter, and included a full tracklist too. Listed below, the music pack spans the band’s early 2000s period as well as more recent tracks from when it returned from its 2009 – 2013 hiatus.
Centuries
Thnks fr th Mmrs
This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race
Immortals
I Don’t Care
My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)
Dance, Dance
Irresistible
Like the band’s live shows, the tracks are said to be “filled with pyro,” with the pack’s trailer showing off a stage, lighting effects, and a stream of fire eruptions.
“That’s why our first VR collab had to have a TON of it… this will be the biggest rock show that Beat Saber has ever seen,” says Fall Out Boy bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz.
The Fall Out Boy Music Pack is slated to release on all supported platforms tomorrow, March 31st, at 10:00am PT (local time here). Individual songs cost $2, while the whole pack costs $11.
This follows the release of multiple music packs over the years, including tracks from Skrillex, BTS, Linkin Park, Timbaland, Greenday, Panic at the Disco!, Imagine Dragons, and a host of artists under the Interscope music label.
Like many, my favourite VR game is Beat Saber. The last time I checked, I had logged over 75 hours playing this lightsaber wielding, modern musical masterpiece. So, whenever a new music pack comes out, I dash to my PlayStation (I really need a Quest version) and download it. And while I’ve loved slashing blocks to Lady Gaga, Linkin Park and even BTS, nothing compares to when the Beat Saber crew put together new tracks, and more importantly, new gameplay mechanics.
With Beat Saber Soundtrack V developer Beat Games not only brings us six new tracks, but also, two new note blocks. For the first time since the original release, they are branching out from the standard blocks, bombs and obstacles. Before we get into the new mechanics, let’s take a look at those songs:
Each new song feels as high energy as those which have come before, but they each feature a more euphoric tone compared to previous releases. There are more sustained notes which soar and wave, cresting up before iconic beat drops. Where past soundtrack updates seemed to focus on difficulty, this pack is establishing new gameplay mechanics, and using the music to showcase them.
Attention! A new update packed with tons of cool stuff just landed in Beat Saber! Go get it now!
– OST 5 featuring 6 exclusive free songs (All tracks are Content ID free!) – New game mechanic – Arc & Chain Notes – New lighting system and environment – 36 new maps in total pic.twitter.com/HRMBN9J3E5
There’s a reason the tracks each feature sustained notes and longer stretches of melody; ‘arc’ notes. These new notes can be spotted easily, as they use the traditional note block as a starting point. You’ll notice an arc of light emitting from the block; this connects through other notes and ends on a block of the same colour. You don’t have to follow the sweeping arc as displayed, you can wave your hands around, but for me, following the curves made everything feel more natural, more musical, and gave me a better sense of expression.
The next new note block is the ‘chain’. This block can be seen as a standard block which looks like it’s had a trip through a shredder. Beat Games is using these notes to express a rapid sequence of notes. Previously a short, staccato eight note effect would have needed eight separate note blocks in quick succession, now however, they are represented by ‘chain’ blocks. You might be thinking, ‘well, that sounds easier’ but the ‘chain’ notes curve a little like the ‘arc’ notes above, so striking them requires a bit more of a flourish from your hands.
Whenever a new pack of songs is released, I always play them on hard difficulty. It’s where I have the most fun and plenty of challenge. The addition of the two new note blocks has seemingly increased the difficulty, even though the notes feel easier to play. While the game feels that bit more difficult, it also feels completely revitalised.
Accompanying the new soundtrack, is a whole new lighting system for the stages. While this may not have a substantial impact on the playing of the game, the new effects elevate each stage, making it feel more encompassing. By the end of my play session, I wanted these new notes in every other Beat Games soundtrack pack. In fact, when the last note of the pack was played, Beat Saber felt like a whole new game.
Beat Saber Soundtrack V is out now on all platforms, and it’s completely free.
Beat Saber, VR’s favorite rhythm game, has been going strong for nearly four years now and shows no signs of slowing. Today the Meta-owned studio behind the title, Beat Games, launched its next free music pack, OST 5, which is introducing some recently teased block mechanics as well as six new songs.
Update (March 8th, 2022): The new OST 5 music pack adds six new songs to Beat Saber’s music library. Here’s the song list:
Schwank: “$1.78”
EEWK: “’Curtains (All Night Long)”
Camellia: “Final-Boss-Chan”
Tanger: “Firestarter”
The Living Tombstone: “I Wanna Be A Machine”
Jaroslav Beck feat. Meredith Bull: “Magic”
You can learn more about the new block mechanics in the release trailer, as well as the original article below:
Original Article (March 1st, 2022): Beat Saber launched in Early Access back in 2018 and in short order showed its ‘killer app’ potential. Following the game’s full launch in 2019, Beat Saber has become VR’s most popular, and likely profitable, game to date. The game has been so popular that Meta bought the studio behind the game, Beat Games, later that year.
The game is not only still going strong, but looks poised to evolve.
Today Beat Game announced the next free music pack for Beat Saber dubbed OST 5, saying it will arrive “soon.” (see update)
Beyond just adding more free levels to the base game (which is priced at $30 and available on Quest, PC VR, and PSVR), OST 5 could be the moment that Beat Saber sees the introduction of new block mechanics and a new lighting system, both of which the studio has teased since the start of the year.
Back in January the studio teased two distinct new mechanics. The first is the addition of lines which players must trace with their sabers; it looks like these lines can be used by themselves or preceding blocks in order to guide the player’s saber to the blocks along a specific path. The second new mechanic is strings of mini-blocks which also encourage the player to cut along a specific path, but in this case each contribute their own beat to the song.
It would be difficult to update old songs for these new mechanics, so it seems likely that they would be introduced along with new songs, like those coming in OST 5.
OST 5 could also bring a revamped lighting system the studio has been working on, which promises to give song makers and modders more control over the visual effects that accompany each song. The studio said in mid-February that the system would be coming as “part of our next release,” though it isn’t entirely clear if this would coincide with OST 5.
We’ll have to wait and see whether OST 5 brings these new systems to Beat Saber, but what we can say almost for certain is that the new song pack will push the game’s base song count above 40 (given 37 base tracks currently in the game and an average of five songs for recent OSTs). The bulk of the game’s official music—99 additional tracks, largely from well known artists—are available as paid DLC.
Go get it now!
