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This is ultimately what they want: their owned walled garden, where they get to be the decider, hold the power, track the user's as first party data, etc. It makes perfect sense. They want this to be the next Android OS (with Play Store equivalent of course).

This is really the only move that gets them back in (perhaps only somewhat) with the dwindling ads market.

Much as I don't like it, it is a legitimate tactic. I just don't see it being effective in the current market, even with Apple as a player.

> They want this to be the next Android OS (with Play Store equivalent of course).

Or the next Apple with the next iOS ?

iOS can only run on Apple hardware.

Google famously made Android "open source" and allows third party manufacturers to run it.

Dwindling Ads market? Which planet do you live?

If what they ultimately want is their own walled garden, then wouldn't opening things up be the opposite of what they should do? I mean, it's a lot harder to re-take control that you previously released than it is to hold onto it from the start. Look at Apple's difficulties tighteninng up control on the mac for example. It has to be a very long game. Compare that to the iPhone, iPad, vision OS that have been tightly controlled from the start and they have no difficulties (other than regulatory) holding the reins tightly.

What control are they actually giving up here though? Seems like they’re just adding reach.

> If what they ultimately want is their own walled garden, then wouldn't opening things up be the opposite of what they should do?

The are only opening things up in their marketing speak. There is not actual opening up happening. "Open" sounds cool, inclusive, and like you are creating a stable platform for others to build on top of (IBM opened up x86, Linus opened up Linux, etc).

Judge by what they do not what they say -- most valid advice in this age of lies.

And I'm still forced to have some form or variant of a Facebook-touched account, even if they want to change the front company behind it.

I don't want to sign in to use a headset, period.

But you do sign in to use an Android phone, or iPhone. Although, I agree with the point that someone would never want to sign in with their Facebook account there, with FB account holding so much personal information about them! For gaming, somebody would rather prefer to use an alias like dungeonmaster669 instead of their verified actual identity.

You don’t have to sign in to use an iPhone or Android phone, though you to have to sign in to use their app stores. Presumably with the advent of DMA though you can avoid creating an Apple ID or Google account if using a 3rd party store (though probably you’ll need some other account for that store, that’s how it always goes…).

Fe: gaming - yes, this is why Apple had separate IDs for gaming center.. and I think Microsoft does this too for Xbox vs Microsoft account?

I also basically have to have a smartphone, and smartphones are entirely self contained devices.

On a scale of trust for how companies are handling my data, Apple, and to a much lesser extent, Google, are still more trustworthy than Facebook, I feel.

On Android at least, you don't have to sign in. You obviously "miss out" on some "features" that way, but it is usable.

Modded beat saber is the only reason I still have kept my original quest

I was half tempted to get a quest after playing beat saber on a friend's device. it's kind of amazing how much better it is than the next best thing you could do on one, some team just knocked it out of the park designing and implementing that game

Pistol whip is pretty good too. Those two get your light saber sword fight fantasy, and the Matrix Gun-Fu fantasy :)

And though I haven't an athletic bone in my body, the fitness / boxing apps are actually a great way to get some exercise in.

Generally, quest 2 was one of the things I haven't had any interest whatsoever until after a year's campaign, my friend basically forced me to try it during a visit :-). I have one now, largely for those 3 apps.

> I sure hope you're happy with exactly 3 2d apps (all equally sized) lined up in a row in a fixed location, because that's all you're getting.

To be fair that is all I really want. Regardless, its still a privacy nightmare which makes it a no-go for me, combined with the fact that the most powerful ("productivity") app I can expect to run on it would be something like excel which makes me not really need anymore than 1 window, at which point its no better than a regular laptop.

I'm waiting for the Simula One, or maybe XReal Air support for linux

EDIT: To be clear, the kind of apps I'd want to be running (what I run on my regular laptop) that I doubt would be available on Meta OS include things like: Godot, Blender, VSCode, terminal windows, probably a bunch of other stuff but those are the main ones

They mention Steam Link but don't mention it isn't allowed to sell in-app purchases (maybe a decision on Steam's side to be fair; they dont want games on Steam themselves having a "remote desktop" overlay workaround where you buy DLC without paying the 30% revenue tax).

Hey, at least it supports webXR and there's no way to control that content.

Why can't you play BeatSaber without mods?

The out of the box track selection is quite weak. The game depends on community made tracks to make it playable in the long term.

You can - it's just far less fun than BeatSaber with mods. The biggest improvement is from being able to select from the community list of songs that are available that may better suit your taste than the songs that come built in. It's a rhythm game so using a rhythm you like makes it much more fun.

Besides song choice, the community also produces higher quality charts than the official ones, and offers difficulty that scales much higher.

Lunatics like these can't be sated by the official songs: https://youtu.be/CKwX349aV98 https://youtu.be/sJQSy3KG-oQ?t=33

That first chart averages 12 notes per second for 5 straight minutes and the player only missed a single note.

Scaling even higher?? Lol I can't even play on medium difficulty on the built-in ones. I don't know how people keep up with the high tracks.

I assume there are sort of natural skill ceilings but if you practice with more difficult scenarios and really push yourself you'd be amazed at what you can do. I've got an essential tremor[1] and I usually play on Expert+ for the vanilla tracks which is usually do-able for me.

1. On that note - my tremor does hurt me here too but unlike twitch shooters (which I loved before my tremor got bad) and things like guitar hero (which require comparatively precise movement) beat saber is usually pretty forgiving about precision of placement and angles - so long as your rhythm is correct you can go pretty far with it.

Lack of any songs I actually care about, and the actual note mapping from the devs has been pretty bad up until recently. The modding community has had them beat for ages. Without mods the game would be a breif curiosity before I got bored with the provided songs, most of which don't suit my taste.

Mind that "mods" includes "custom tracks".

OG BeatSaber comes with a small-ish selection of tracks, most of them obscure and not generally known. Good or bad, they get boring quickly. Modding lets you expand to arbitrary number of tracks, including pretty much all the ones you like. It's what makes it fun and worth returning to. Not being able to add your own music, makes BeatSaber not worth the sticker price (much less if you're getting Oculus just to play it).

Also note that people were used to this capability, because before BeatSaber became a poster child for Oculus, it was streamed to other headsets from PC, where adding custom tracks was tacitly allowed.

because they want to use songs they didn't pay for

How do you know that??

No, that's basically correct. Mods are primarily for downloading community-made tracks/maps for songs not included with the game. There are also officially licensed DLC song packs, but they're quite pricy and still only provide access to a limited selection of tracks.

That's literally what the mods do :).

There's moral discussions to be had I'm sure, but the purpose of the beat sabre mods is pretty factual :).

Not quite; piracy of the paid DLC is one thing, but modding is to add songs (which should be read as, entire Beatsaber custom-made tracks) that otherwise are not available through any other avenues.

More likely because they want to use songs that aren't offered except by modding.

If I paid for the song (even somewhere else, even on a subscription like spotify/apple music), I should be able to dance/move to it. I don't think one should have to re-buy every song in a videogame. Especially when the work is done for free to put in the dance moves by modders.

You don't pay for the song when you pay for streaming services, you pay to stream it. You have no rights beyond streaming the song.

There are lots songs for which it is fully legal to listen to without paying for. Many people release songs for people to listen to for free!

This is especially true within the rhythm game community, for which many fans simply like to make rhythm songs and for people to play them.

That is absolutely a valid usecase that should be allowed.

if i want to play a map of alkatraz, which is a song i own, i cannot do so without modding because beatsaber will never release demondice tracks

Plus, it doesn’t have the Apple logo.