Yeah, but as someone who owned the Rift S and then bought a Quest - it turns out there's a rude surprise that all the games you bought for the Rift S have to be bought again for the Quest.
The Rift S was a huge mistake, ironically I only bought it because when I asked my friend working at Oculus which one to get he said to get the Rift S (I suspected then they didn't care about it).
> all the games you bought for the Rift S have to be bought again for the Quest.
Wrong on 2 accounts.
1. A lot of games support cross-buy between Rift and Quest versions.
2. For those that don't support cross-buy (or games that only have a Rift version), and you already own them for Rift, you can play them on Quest just fine by connecting it to your desktop either wirelessly (using software like VRDesktop) or using a cable. Just like you were previously able to with Rift (minus the wireless option, iirc it wasn't a thing for Rift).
Tl;dr: Quest is a superset of Rift's functionality. You can do everything with Quest that you could do with Rift. Officially supported, without any hacks or workarounds. If you had a game you purchased for Rift, you can play it on Quest just as if you were playing it on Rift without paying anything extra.
1 is not true for the games I had (which were the most popular ones including beat saber).
Saying “just use a cable” or crappy streaming software to play games on the quest when the entire point is to have a wireless device is lame.
Most people are going to assume if you buy something in the oculus store that you can play it on oculus devices (unless it’s an issue related to device performance which I can understand).
Your original complaint was that you have to rebuy games you already bought for Rift to be able to play them on Quest, which is not true. You can play them on Quest the exact same way you were able to on Rift.
Also, wireless solution isn't "crappy". I tried Half-Life: Alyx using both cable and wireless (VRDesktop) for an hour each, and ended up finishing the game using wireless, because it felt more comfortable, and I didn't notice any difference that I could actually spot.
> "You can play them on Quest the exact same way you were able to on Rift."
Yeah, but the entire point of buying the Quest is so I don't have to play them the exact way I was able to on the Rift.
For a comparison, what you're describing feels like this:
1. I buy a videogame on steam and play it on my computer.
2. I buy a new computer and download steam.
3. Steam tells me that I have to rebuy the game to play it on new computer.
4. Someone on HN says I can just connect my new computer to the old computer in order to play the game and that this is 'the exact same way'.
Do you see how that's a shitty experience?
It's ridiculous that the quest version of the game is a separate thing you have to buy even though it's the same store. Your solution relegates me to being attached to the PC defeating the entire point of the quest. If the game couldn't be played on the quest because it needed the PC's graphics that's one thing, but this isn't that - beatsaber exists and works fine on the quest.
>It's ridiculous that the quest version of the game is a separate thing you have to buy even though it's the same store.
Again, this isn't Oculus' fault in this case, but the dev's. It is dev's choice whether to offer their product as cross-buy or not.
And, in a lot of cases, it makes sense why they didn't do it. For example, if the differences between versions are so stark that they are almost different games, paying separately makes sense. For me, personally, about half of the games I own that exist on both Rift and Quest were purchased with cross-buy, so I didn't have to pay twice. And I like to support devs who do things in the interests of the consumer with my wallet.
I'd argue that it is Oculus' fault, they own the platform and could force the devs to do it if they want to be in the store.
Do you think Apple would put up with this kind of thing?
I buy a ton of software and I'm happy to support devs, but this isn't that.
Rebuying the same product from the same store to use on an iteration of the Oculus' VR hardware sucks. My guess is they looked and figured it didn't matter since there were so few Rift S owners.
Would you be okay with having to rebuy the same games every VR hardware release?
> "And, in a lot of cases, it makes sense why they didn't do it. For example, if the differences between versions are so stark that they are almost different games, paying separately makes sense."
The Rift S was a huge mistake, ironically I only bought it because when I asked my friend working at Oculus which one to get he said to get the Rift S (I suspected then they didn't care about it).
They should never have shipped it.