Developer Beat Games' acclaimed wand-waggling rhythm effort Beat Saber will be getting its long-awaited multiplayer mode next month, on October 13th.

Details regarding the multiplayer mode's exact nature are, admittedly, still rather thin on the ground, but Facebook (which acquired Beat Games last year), says players will be able to battle up to five friends or random opponents in a bid to reign supreme.

There's also a trailer to accompanying the announcement, but it's not particularly illuminating.

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Beat Games, the developer behind VR arm-flailing rhythm-action smash Beat Saber, has been acquired by Facebook and is now officially part of the company's Oculus Studios.

Announcing the acquisition in a new blog post, Facebook's Mike Verdu positively quivered, "The shared experiences of games are profoundly memorable ones, and for millions of people, Beat Saber was their first encounter with immersive VR. Today we're announcing that Beat Games is joining us in our quest to bring VR to more people".

According to Verdu, Beat Games will join Oculus Studios as an independently operated developer, and will continue to be located in Prague. "The story we aim to prove over time is this," he wrote, "An indie studio joins forces with some like-minded allies, and together they find a way to push VR to new heights."

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Developer Beat Games' wonderful arm-flailing VR spectacular, Beat Saber, has expanded its song roster once more, this time adding new paid DLC tracks inspired by Rocket League.

Beat Saber's latest DLC offering, officially titled the Rocket League X Monstercat Music Pack, is available for PSVR, Oculus, and Vive, and introduces a total of six new tracks, each having previously featured in Psyonix's popular four-wheeled football game.

Those curious to run the new songs through their earholes (and admire the accompanying new environment) before they buy, can hop over to Beat Games' YouTube page, where the developer has thoughtfully uploaded gameplay footage of each track. Alternatively, for your convenience, you can just click on a song title below to be whisked away to the relevant video.

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Developer Beat Games has announced that its VR rhythm phenomenon Beat Saber will officially leave early access on PC next week, 21st May.

Beat Saber first emerged on the VR scene back in May last year, meaning it will have remained in Steam and Oculus early access development for just over 12 months - somewhat longer than originally intended by its developer. A PSVR version launched as "complete" (given Sony's lack of an early access programme) last November.

According to a new Steam post from Beat Games, Beat Saber's full version 1.0 launch on PC next week is "simply a formality for us". The studio says it's decided to transition out of early access as "all features we wanted to have in the game when we first launched are now there" - but insists this doesn't mean an end to Beat Saber's development.

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Developer Beat Games has announced that its VR rhythm phenomenon Beat Saber will officially leave early access on PC next week, 21st May.

Beat Saber first emerged on the VR scene back in May last year, and has remained in Steam and Oculus early access development for 12 months - somewhat longer than originally intended by its developer. A PSVR version launched as "complete" (given Sony's lack of an early access programme) last November.

According to a new Steam post from Beat Games, Beat Saber's full version 1.0 launch on PC next week is "simply a formality for us". The studio says it's decided to transition out of early access as "all features we wanted to have in the game when we first launched are now there" - but insists this doesn't mean an end to Beat Saber's development.

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It's been three years since the initial launch of Facebook's Oculus Rift and this spring, Oculus will be launching two new versions of its headset. Both the Oculus Quest and the Oculus Rift S will retail for 399/€449 each, but after hands on time with both, it's safe to say they offer radically different experiences depending on what kind of gamer you actually are.

The next iteration of the Rift comes with Oculus Insight - that's full, six degrees of freedom tracking using five inbuilt sensors on the headset that offer room scale VR, right out of the box. This means no more annoying external sensors need to be placed around your gaming setup in order to track the movement of both your head and hands.

Whilst the Rift S still relies on PC computational power to run its software, the amount of cables needed to do this has been reduced to just one single five-metre cable. Not only is this much more convenient in the long run, it also opens up the possibility of playing on powerful laptops with a limited number of USB ports.

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I love VR.

I've loved it in all of its bastardised and malformed versions over the years.

The first time I ever played in virtual reality was at the Trocadero in London, and it was the VR iteration that made you stand in a weird, hula-hoop-like machine, clutching a retro flight-sim-style joystick as you aimlessly wandered around a VR world that looked like a kitchen cupboard demo whipped up at a Moben showroom.

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Developer Beat Games' superb block-smacking VR rhythm extravaganza Beat Saber has launched its first paid DLC music pack on PC and PlayStation 4.

Known as the Monstercat Music Pack Vol. 1 (you may, of course, remember dance label Monstercat from its regular collaborations with Rocket League), the DLC offers 10 brand-new tracks for committed Beat Saber fans to twizzle their sticks to with wild abandon. No judgement; I say this as someone who inadvertently punched a bonsai tree off my coffee table during a particularly enthusiastic session recently.

The full track-list can be found immediately below, but if you'd rather experience the songs through the medium of your ears rather than your eyes, website UploadVR has very kindly popped the whole lot into a single Spotify playlist for your delectation.

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Valve has updated its SteamVR software after Beat Saber players managed to reach rhythmic flailing speeds not thought "humanly possible".

Beat Saber, for those unaware, is a rhythm game in which players don their VR headsets and attempt slash blocks hurtling toward them using a virtual lightsaber, all in time to music. If you'd like something a little more visual, you can see an increasingly sweaty Eurogamer's Ian Higton show off his arm movements in the video below.

As with the best rhythm games, the thrill in Beat Saber comes from reaching that zen-like state in which mind and music meld to the point where physical responses happen virtually subconsciously. Unfortunately, it seems that PC players, perhaps a little too swept up in the music, were successfully managing to reach speeds, as they dramatically waved controllers back and forth, that climbed above the threshold at which SteamVR's tracking system was able to keep up. Cue, in certain edge cases at least, missed notes and much sadness.

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