In a new Oculus blog post, Facebook announced official support for subscriptions services on the Oculus Quest platform. Rec Room, VZFit and more will be the first apps to adopt the new model.
Some apps, like fitness app Supernatural, already adopt a subscription model on Quest that the user has to set up externally, outside of VR and the Oculus ecosystem. The app would then perform a check to ensure that the user is subscribed each time Supernatural is launched. Now, apps can implement native support for a subscription models on the Quest platform, along with free trial support as well.
According to the post, subscription types will differ per title. “For some, you’ll need a subscription to access the service. For others, the subscription is optional to unlock even more content and features.”
Included in today’s line-up is FitXR, the UK-based fitness service formerly known as BoxVR. We’ve been hands-on with some of its new updates already. Rec Room is also adding Rec Room Plus, which gives subscribers 6,000 tokens, weekly items and exclusive store options. VZfit is another fitness service launching today, too.
Elsewhere there’s subscriber options for meditative VR app, TRIPP, the vSpatial collaboration app and even Tribe XR’s VR DJing.
In a statement provided to UploadVR, Facebook said that it had already been working with those few developers that offered subscription models before today. “We’ve worked with a number of developers over the last year to bring subscription content to our platform even before our Oculus subscription support was ready to go. Those devs are now in the process of transitioning over to our native system. Going forward, immersive VR apps that monetize with subscriptions on our platform will use our system.”
If you’ve already got a subscription with an existing service that you started before official support was brought in, you will still have access to all the content you purchased.
In the case of apps like Rec Room, access to the app and all existing content will remain as is, with an optional “Rec Room Plus” subscription added into the fray.
You can read more about each app’s individual subscription offerings over on the Oculus blog.
