The Oculus Rift and Gear VR share a good portion of their software libraries, but don’t offer any kind of cross-buy promotions right now. Could that change in the future?
According to Oculus itself, any developer could offer this deal, in which buying one version of a game on one platform would also unlock it on the other. The company’s Andy Borrell said as much to UploadVR during his “From Start to Ship” talk at the 2016 Digital Dragons event in Krakow, Poland this week. Borrell noted that the company was “totally open” to supporting that kind of deal, though also explained that it was up to developers to “work with the [Oculus] Store team” to offer it.
With so many titles now releasing on both Gear VR and Oculus Rift, this is one element of the Oculus ecosystem that feels lacking. Rift and Gear users retain the same Oculus ID across both platforms, so there doesn’t seem to be any reason as to why this couldn’t be offered more readily. Square Enix Montreal puzzler Hitman GO, for example, recently launched a ‘Definitive Edition’ on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, charging one price for both versions. Last week’s release of Hitman GO VR on Rift and Gear, however, didn’t include any such deal. In fact, the PC release was even priced slightly higher.
And it doesn’t stop with Agent 47. Top Gear VR titles like Esper 2, Gunjack, and Dead Secret are now available on Rift and even HTC Vive in some cases. Rift and Gear could stand to gain a lot from communicating with each other more; cross-save is another underutilised aspect of the ecosystem. To its credit, though, Oculus is starting to experiment with cross-platform play, as the recently announced Gear VR version of High Voltage Software’s Dragon Front will allow for online play against Oculus Rift users.
We hope to see plenty more of this going forward. It would certainly help Gear VR stay relevant as the higher-end devices increase in install base.
