6 Years On, ‘Beat Saber’ Shows No Signs of Stopping with New Free Music Pack

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May 24, 2024

Beat Saber is the VR rhythm game behemoth that can’t be stopped. Just two months after dropping the Daft Punk music pack, Beat Games is teasing its next music pack, the free OST 7 pack.

Beat Saber launched as a little-known indie game in early access on SteamVR all the way back in May 2018. It was clear then that it was something special, but I don’t think anyone can say they knew just how big it would be—it reportedly surpassed $250 million in lifetime sales as of 2023.

The game has long since reached its 1.0 version and also landed on Quest, PSVR 1, and PSVR 2. Its ‘easy to play, hard to master’ gameplay kept people coming back for more, catching the eye of Meta which ultimately acquired developer Beat Games in 2019. And though that put VR’s killer app solely in the hands of Meta, the company has made good on its promise to keep Beat Saber a multiplatform game, offering feature parity, equal music pack availability, and even cross-play multiplayer between platforms.

Over the years Beat Saber has seen the release of additional music packs, many from major artists. While most are paid, a solid lineup of free packs have been released over the years, and now Beat Saber is getting another one.

Beat Games teased the OST 7 music pack today, but offered little more than “coming soon.”

All the previous ‘OST’ music packs for the game have been free, and it’s unlikely this one will be any different. We have no hints as to how many or which tracks will be included, but most of the ‘OST’ packs have included original and indie music, with a handful of bangers made specifically for the game.

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When it does land, you can expect to find the Beat Saber OST 7 music pack on SteamVR, Quest, PSVR, and PSVR 2.

Will Beat Saber still be pumping out music packs another six years from now? As incredible as that would be (a 12 year old VR game staying relevant enough to continue to update) betting against Beat Saber seems to be a bad idea.

ViRGiN

Because it’s overhyped. But it’s continuous sales proves that there are more and more Quest users every single day. (yes, Quest, not PCVR).

But it’s also pathethic situation, cause it’s probably the most recognizable game ever cause there was just sooo many videos with green screen and BS. Then you have people just searching ‘BEST VR GAMES ON QUEST’, and they watch a 4 year old video recommending the same games.
ViRGiN

6 years from now, PCVR users will still be doing headset benchmarks with Half Life Alyx.
Christian Schildwaechter

The linked article about Beat Saber USD 250mn lifetime sales is from April 2023, but itself refers to documents received by the Wall Street Journal stating that Beat Saber had made more than USD 255mn by October 2022 already.

Almost a year later Meta reported that the Quest store had generated a total of USD 2bn in revenue by September 2023. Meta gets 30% of that, so about USD 600mn. With the Beat Saber numbers a year old by then, it should be responsible for 1/3rd to half of all the money Meta ever made from XR software sales.

The calculation is somewhat off/fuzzy: the USD 600mn would include 30% from Beat Saber for Quest, Beat Saber also sells on Steam and PSVR1/2, which keep 30% of the revenue on their platforms, and a significant portion of the DLC sales will go into music license fees. It is unknown what Facebook paid for the Czech 10 person studio Beat Games about 20 months after they released Beat Saber, but it was very likely a pretty good deal for both sides.

Overall Beat Saber is an absolutely in-proportionally valuable XR title, and Meta’s Supernatural will be following close due to lots of monthly subscribers. Meta will still lose a lot of money on XR, but effectively they don’t only dominate the consumer VR hardware market, but also the app market by revenue. The distribution of Quest store revenue was already very uneven for the ~650 apps that made it to the official store, and will now become a lot more unbalanced with an additional 2200 App lab titles getting integrated.
- VrSLuT
  
  “should” is such a weasel-word. Yes, they used BS to make their numbers look good!
Peter vasseur

Haven’t played and don’t Plan on it for another 7 years. This game may be great for the casuals. But it’s a tech demo game.
- Arno van Wingerde
  
  It may not be your thing, I just recently bought it myself. However, although it is simple and runs perfectly well on less hardware than an RTX 4090, it is easily the most popular game in VR.
  Gorilla Tag is even simpler but that has not stopped people from playing it…
  Not every game must be complex and offer incredible graphics!
  - ViRGiN
    
    > Not every game must be complex and offer incredible graphics!
    no, but if beat saber and gorilla tag are dominating the charts for years, it’s a lost medium.
    
    especially! beat saber. it doesn’t even need VR to work _exactly the same_. its literally a kinect grade game.
    
    how would you feel if worldwide #1 use case for VR headsets was hands-free ebook reading, with a gigantic gap of nothingness in between?
    
    imagine if the best thing rtx4090 could do, is path traced minecraft. cool, but is it that cool?
    - PuiuCS
      
      that is so wrong that it is borderline a nonsense hate comment for vr
      - ViRGiN
        
        You’re obviously morbidly obese, and see vr as a way to loose some weight, that’s cool too.
      - PuiuCS
        
        sounds like you are projecting ;)
coment80

Milking a cow beyond death it is…
Here are some ready-made ideas for a sequel:

– simple story (mario-like rescuing a princes is enough)
– epic arenas with crowd dynamically responsive for speed and dexterity of a player
– and an announcer, as in an arena, briefly announcing the game
– fully customizable chatacter and sabres
– different shapes of blocks (circle, triangle, trapezoid)
– single blocks to cut from two sides
– arenas in the flying planes, trains, on the top of the mountains, in the cities

Enough?