Should you avoid buying from the Oculus store?

bazzabear · 1 Apr 2019 at 14:56

It's a bit late occurring to me, but is it short sighted to buy directly from the Oculus store because it locks you in to that manufacturers products, and we don't know if future tech generations might make someone really want to switch?

Using steam instead for example still lets you play the game on the Rift.

aoaaron · 1 Apr 2019 at 20:49

Yes.

Steam is more open, valve releasing the knuckles, more headsets on the steam platform, most steam vr games have an oculus sdk launch option anyway.

Slam62 · 1 Apr 2019 at 20:51

I always buy from steam

silvagti · 1 Apr 2019 at 21:25

One plus point about the Oculus store is that they've announced cross buy as an option for games between their desktop rift and mobile Quest headsets. Could be a good feature of the Oculus store going forward.

Ravenger · 1 Apr 2019 at 21:53

silvagti said:
One plus point about the Oculus store is that they've announced cross buy as an option for games between their desktop rift and mobile Quest headsets. Could be a good feature of the Oculus store going forward.

This will be the main reason I'm sticking with the Oculus Store for the moment.

hyperseven · 1 Apr 2019 at 23:04

silvagti said:
One plus point about the Oculus store is that they've announced cross buy as an option for games between their desktop rift and mobile Quest headsets. Could be a good feature of the Oculus store going forward.

Only if the publisher of the game chooses to enable it for their title. Why would anyone do this unless they were getting compensation from Facebook to do so :confused:

Some good exclusives on the Oculus store.

Wrinkly · 2 Apr 2019 at 09:08

I avoid the Oculus store as it locks you into the hardware, and I use a Rift. All of my games exist on Steam so I will lose nothing when it comes to upgrade time.

bazzabear · 2 Apr 2019 at 09:38

Interesting thoughts, thanks guys. I guess it's probably a case of deciding from game to game. If it's cheap enough, or you expect your playing of it to be short term, then there's no harm.
But something like Beat Saber, which will have great replay value because of adding songs, would be better bought elsewhere. (Of course I've already bought that on Oculus!)

Not a big deal for just a few games, but I can see you'd be kicking yourself if you built up a big library and then wanted to change to another manufacturer.

Ravenger · 2 Apr 2019 at 13:39

hyperseven said:
Only if the publisher of the game chooses to enable it for their title. Why would anyone do this unless they were getting compensation from Facebook to do so

The developers of Apex Construct (note: not Apex Legends :rolleyes:

) just announced on Reddit that they are enabling cross-buy. They did of their own accord, because that's how they want to treat their customers. I'm sure other developers will decide to do the same. It also means their game has more chance of being demoed to new users, thus more sales.

This sort of thing makes a Quest a no-brainer for me. I can bring a substantial portion of my Rift library across to Quest on day one.

I think Oculus regards this as a sound marketing move, as it'll get more Rift owners buying the device and buying games that work on both platforms, and helps users show off a wide variety of content to their friends. Another thing is they're enabling cross-play too, so MP games will be far more populated from day one.

Also, with the Valve Index using Knuckles controllers, there'll be far more control parity between Oculus VR and Steam VR. So ReVive will work better as the controls will be almost identical to Rift.

This also works for future Steam VR games that use Knuckles, converting to Rift will be easy as the controls are not hugely different, unlike the vive wands vs touch.

bazzabear · 2 Apr 2019 at 14:02

Presumably, as it's the VR equivalent of a console, Beat Saber custom songs are very unlikely to be available on the Quest?

Ravenger · 2 Apr 2019 at 14:55

bazzabear said:
Presumably, as it's the VR equivalent of a console, Beat Saber custom songs are very unlikely to be available on the Quest?

Unlikely, though Carmack has confirmed sideloading is possible, just like on the Oculus go, so maybe.

Slam · 2 Apr 2019 at 16:36

to point out the obvious, get the Oculus exclusives from the Oculus store.

Buying from Steam is fine, its obviously what I'm used to doing being a pc gamer but I find that games from the Oculus store always run well on my Rift whereas this isn't always the case from Steam.

DONOHUE07 · 2 Apr 2019 at 18:44

At 1st I wanted to buy everything from the Oculus store, but I later came to my senses, if the game supports Oculus’s SDK, or is confirmed to run well via opencomposite then I’ll prefer to buy through steam.

CuriousTomCat · 5 Apr 2019 at 19:31

It's not a good idea to lock yourself into the Oculus Store because your only upgrade route will be the Rift S.

There's some really cool headsets coming out soon such as the Valve Index and HTC Cosmos (plus more in the future) so bear in mind that you'll loose access to any games on your Occulus account if move to a 3rd party headset.

Zeeflyboy · 5 Apr 2019 at 20:37

While it's not entirely true that buying from the oculus store locks you to the rift (see revive which allows playing of oculus only titles on the Vive), it is certainly a safer bet for the freedom of being able to choose more or less any future HMD and being able to still access all your titles in the most straight forward manner.

Another good reason is that I generally find the steam versions are available cheaper, especially in the more common steam sales. This might be offset if you intend to buy a Quest and the cross-platform ability would be of use... otherwise you might find yourself buying some games twice.

Oculus was pretty good at launching steam titles last I tried too, so the convenience factor of buying in the oculus store isn't what it used to be either.