Beat Saber developer Beat Games confirmed to Road to VR that the game will include all official features, modes, and music when it launches with Quest this Spring. Additionally, the studio says it didn’t have to make any concessions on tracking input logic to account for Quest’s inside-out tracked controllers.
As far as standalone VR headsets go, Quest is the very first that will natively run Beat Saber, and we have been suitably impressed with its ability to handle the game’s hardest difficulty without tracking issues. As good as it felt in our hands-on, there was always the possibility that the developers had to introduce some invisible handicapping to make sure it worked well against the limitations and challenges of inside-out tracking.
However, Beat Saber creator Jan “Split” Ilavsky tells Road to VR that the Quest version of the game uses identical tracking logic to both PC and PSVR versions of the game. That’s impressive considering the kind of tracking performance that playing Beat Saber at a high level demands. Ilavsky said that the studio didn’t have to make any adjustments at all to compensate for the headset’s inside-out controller tracking.
Beat Games CEO and composer Jaroslav Beck confirmed to Road to VR that Beat Saber on Quest will be the full game right at launch, including all official features, modes, and music as found on other platforms.
When Beat Saber first launched on PlayStation VR late last year, it included a good deal of exclusive content which was not available on the PC version at the time (like a Campaign mode with unique challenges, modifiers, and exclusive music). Last month, the PC version saw a major update which brought feature and content parity to the game on both platforms. At launch, the Quest version will be identical in terms of content and official music, Beck said.
One significant feature—custom song support—is only available on PC, as it is enabled through unofficial third-party mods. Such mods cannot run on PlayStation. It’s just about certain that Beat Saber on Quest will not officially support custom songs, though it remains unclear if it will be possible to deploy third-party mods to enable custom songs on Quest.
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Beat Saber is a confirmed launch title for Quest, though the headset’s actual release date is still no more specific than “Spring.” With Facebook’s annual developer conference, F8, coming up at the end of the month, we’re expecting to see the company either launch the headset at the event outright, or provide a final launch date.