Studio Behind The Hit VR Game Beat Saber Shows Interest In Developing For Switch

The switch's main colors are red and blue. Beat Saber's main colors are red and blue...

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"Oh yeah. It's all coming together."

I could see it happening actually, since the Joycons can easily be used for the game. The main concern would be adding music since the PS4 version you could add songs from your PC or CDs to it.

@theiRiS Don't forget possibly changing the colors of the sabers to match the other color Joycons.

How are you going to slash with your saber when both hands are holding the LABO VR?

The joy cons aren't really precise enough for this are they? I mean, what does "something like" Beat Saber even look like? Fruit Ninja?

@Torakaka what are you talking about? There is no official way to do that

@SARankDirector I mean, before the last update your switch knew the color of your joycons. It would show it every time you pluged them in. Maybe they'd be able to get the support from nintendo on that

@NoTinderLife interesting point dude

I don’t think Beat Saber could be ported across in its current form with the same accuracy as you get in a VR headset. All the current major ones use some form of camera to track the 3D position of the controller in relation to the headset and that’s not really possible on the Switch.

I have an Oculus Quest and a PS VR and when the cameras can’t see the controller you can instantly tell as the tracking switches to guessing where it is based on last known position and data from the gyro and accelerometer which quickly loses accuracy. Switch currently doesn’t have any way to track both the Joycon externally (I mean maybe the sensor on the bottom of the right joycon but it’s in the wrong place if you were holding them for beatsaber and the left one is missing this). The scoring system is all about how accurately you cut the block in half and the angle of your swing before and after you hit a block and 3D positioning is vital for this.

I’m also unsure about how well the game would translate to a standard TV as depth perception is really really useful for hitting blocks in VR.

I’m very happy to be proven wrong on all this of course but I don’t see them bringing full beat saber across to switch.

I’ve played a lot of beat saber since I got my quest over the summer so feel free ask any questions about it or the quest (seriously the quest is my favourite gadget right now).

The joyccons do work as a Wii pointer tho the only game that currently supports this is world of goo

@Vepra I was talking about your post about adding music

@Lord I know that but that isn’t enough to track the exact position of the joycon. For example the Quest has a camera in the each corner of the headset and the controllers have a ring of LEDs on them so the cameras can determine where exactly they are. If you move the controller out of sight line of the cameras the tracking gets really dodgy really quickly and beat saber requires pinpoint accuracy. The quest recently had an update that very slightly caused tracking problems when moving fast and you could instantly tell if you were playing on expert as you suddenly started missing notes.

Also Oculus have another headset called the go which has a controller very similar to a joycon (the primary input is using it as a pointer like in world of goo on switch). They didn’t port beat saber to this one presumably because of the controller set up.

@Torakaka "The main concern would be adding music since the PS4 version you could add songs from your PC or CDs to it"

What? No way. I've got a PS4 pro with PSVR and Beat Saber and that's not an option at all. I really want to know, do you have a source to that, or can you explain how that works so I can try it myself?

So, it would be really cool if they can pull the game off on the Switch. But the biggest concern is how they're going to pull it off with both joycons, that the game will recognize your positions of them.

It would be a technical achievement for the system if they do get it working, but it might take a lot of work. Let's see how they pull it off.

@Torakaka Actually, the PS4 version could NOT add songs from your PC or CDs, that was the PC version and a separate program that you make tracks for the game with... unless I've missed something about it since I got it day one on PSVR. Now, there are 2-3 song packs you can get, but you cannot add your own music to the PSVR version.

@Glassneedles I feel like it could be done in a more "guitar hero" manner, which kind of deflates the entire experience that Beat Saber try's to deliver on.

@Unit_DTH I agree with you on that. It could definitely be done but with a lot more static sabers. I’m not sure if they would need to change mapping to achieve this (mainly bits where the colours swap sides) or not but I don’t know how much of the experience you could get across.

I’m trying not to sound elitist while saying this (and am aware that I am failing) but I think Beat Saber wouldn’t work outside of VR. I mean the reason I love it is how immersed you get in it and I just don’t think it will translate that well. Plus 360 mode has me really excited!

@SARankDirector Oh, sorry for misunderstanding. Also the music wasnt my post

@Glassneedles First off... 360 Mode?!?!?! I'm slacking on keeping up with what that is and now I must find out more! Next, they could do the control of the sabers fairly simply, using a relational space pointer setup akin to world of goo for switch. I agree that the translation of it outside of vr would deteriorate the experience though. That game is made entirely for vr, but there are a few games that are VR games that made the transition to switch and work really well. Honestly, it is up to the talent of the developer as to whether or not they could make their game transition from vr to switch.

@Unit_DTH 360 mode was announced at E3 I think. You can watch a video of it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoFa6c6sZTE

I'm not sure if it's coming to PS VR however. They confirmed that the 360 mode is probably going to be Quest exclusive as it is wire free, they did say they are working on a 180 mode for other platforms but I can still see that being an issue on PS VR with the single camera set up. Obviously I don't know your experiences with the tracking on it but I only really use my PS VR now for Tetris Effect as trying to do anything more elaborate (especially when you bring the Move controllers into the picture) results in pretty bad tracking that really takes you out of it. I've spent ages trying to get it working properly but even having the camera mounted 2.5m up doesn't help when you need to bend down or reach behind you.

What I was trying to get at with my previous posts was that Beat Saber without the 3D positioning would be a pretty far step down, I'm sure they could rework it to fit but I think that it would lose what made it special in the process.

@Vepra you responded so I thought you were an alt