Newsletter
Oculus has delivered more best-selling VR head-mounted displays (HMDs) than anyone else on the market, including an incredibly compelling library of exclusive titles that make the headset purchase worth the price. There’s always been one problem though; saves can’t be easily shared between devices, meaning you’d have to somehow manually sync progress in games that you’ve played at home or on the go.
This problem was compounded by the launch of the Oculus Quest, which featured dozens of cross-buy titles that would be instantly available on the Quest if you’ve purchased them on the Oculus Store at any time. Without a way to bring your existing saves over to that game, however, it didn’t seem like a big deal to players who have already experienced a title before.
That all changes with the latest Oculus SDK update, which now supports cloud saves for the Oculus Quest, Oculus Go, and the GearVR. Oculus Cloud Saves v2 is a huge feature addition for these ultra-portable headsets, especially the Oculus Go and Oculus Quest, which don’t require a smartphone or powerful PC to power the VR experience. Now when a developer writes in support for cloud saves, users will be able to easily pick up and play their favorite game on any Oculus headset since all of them are now supported.
The Oculus Rift has had this cloud save functionality for 3 years, but isn’t a required mandate for games and isn’t always supported. Worse yet, you’ll have to count on the developer enabling the feature and letting you know in the description of the title, as there’s no way to see which games support cloud saves straight from the Oculus Store. Oculus has recently updated the store with support for better organization via several categories and new layouts though, so it’s entirely possible that they’re working on an easier way of identifying titles with cross-buy and cloud save functionality for the future.
Cloud saves aren’t just good for cross-play functionality though, they’re also invaluable when upgrading headsets or switching platforms; something that’s become more commonly done with the advent of the Oculus Quest, which runs a customized version of Android under the hood.
There’s no way to enable this functionality as a consumer, though. The developer of each app or game will have to do that, but given the user base size Oculus titles have, this shouldn’t take long for the major titles out there, especially the ones that support cross-buy.
Oculus has done some incredible work lately with platform updates, which have done everything from adding new features, to fixing major bugs and improving the overall user experience.
We’ve also seen a big jump in multi-platform VR experiences that allow players to get together and enjoy a game or app without having to worry about what headset their friends have, or what platform their friend’s headsets are running on. Bridging the gap of accessibility is the key to continuing to push VR into the mainstream, and that doesn’t just mean easier to use headsets like the Oculus Quest; it also means easier to use software just as this update provides.