Casual Indie VR Game Beat Saber Sells 50K+ Copies in 1st Week, Far Outpacing AAA Immersive World VR Games

Beat Saber sold 50.000 copies in the first week! That's INSANE, guys! ❤️

100.000 copies...LOADING 🤘 pic.twitter.com/H99kOYWrIj

— Beat Saber (@BeatSaber) May 13, 2018

Rock Band + light sabers + viral videos = massive hit: 50,000 copies sold in the first week, which means its appearance on top Steam's charts a couple weeks ago wasn't a fluke. To put that 50,000 in perspective, that's more than Skyrim VR sold all last year (37,000), and on track to soon surpass all Fallout 4 VR sales in the same time frame (78,500). At this rate, Beat Saber will also beat out VR sales for the much more hardcore indie hit Superhot (164,000+ copies sold in 2017).

I could write yet another think piece about the VR market rewarding more accessible, easier to play games with shorter play times over deep immersive world games many assumed would be virtual reality's killer app... but here's a Drake meme instead:

And that's how it is. (Meme by u/Dudemanbrosirguy via this Reddit thread.)

Comments

[sirhc desantis]

Not surprised - must be the first time I saw basically a 2d vid and thought "that actually looks fun... but not enough to shell out for the kit yet".
PS that reddit thread was all I thought it would be. Including a new way it can make you nauseous =^^=

[Adeon Writer]

It's a blast and a workout. Even if the controllers weigh near nothing the rapid movements will have you sweating on the harder difficulties.

[TonyVT Skarredghost]

They made a neat game with great marketing. And the addition of light sabers has been great to increase sales

[madeline blackbart]

I mean it doesn't surprise me that this outsold Skyrim or Fallout 4. We've already played them in 2d. Personally, I bought Fallout 4 for VR and played it some but it's just....I've already played it. I know what the story is. I know what everyone is going to say to me already. The fact you can't easily mod those games just makes it that much worse since you can't add new content. I mean even with VR added in...how many times can we play the same 2 games!?

[Harv]

Hopefully standalone VR headsets will take off. If they manage to add positional tracking of controllers and keep the price in range 200-300 that would be ideal.