Meta has announced a subscription service for Quest VR headset owners, providing access to a pair of games each month.
The service, called Meta Quest+, works a little like the original version of PlayStation Plus. Each month two titles are available to download. While these are cycled after a month, once you claim them you are free to play through them after they leave, as long as you have an active Quest+ subscription.
Quest+ costs £7.99 a month, or £59.99 a year. Opt for the monthly subscription and there is no commitment to stay signed up for longer than a month. And if you sign up on or before July 31, you’ll get the first month’s sub for £1.
Choose to leave but return further down the line and you’ll still be able to access the games you claimed the first time around. This means you can effectively pick and choose the months you want to sign up for, if you’re organised enough.
What games are coming to Meta Quest+?
Meta has already told us what’s coming to Quest+ over the next couple of months.
In July, you will be able to claim Pistol Whip, a rhythm action game in which you shoot to the beat. It was released way back in 2019 but still commands a price of £22.99 over at the Quest store.
The second title is Pixel Ripped 1995, a “game within a game” experience where you play as a 9-year-old boy playing a 90s console game at home. However, it soon moves beyond making you play in front of a virtual TV. This title currently costs £14.99 on the Quest store.
In August, Quest+ will offer the popular multiplayer minigolf title Walkabout Minigolf (£10.99) and the frantic first-person shooter Mothergunship Forge (£14.99).
The service supports the Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets, as well as the Quest 3 due out in September. Original Quest owners are out of luck, because some games will not support the older headset, including August’s Mothergunship Forge.
Is VR popular?
Quest+ is an attempt to tackle an issue uncovered by The Washington Post earlier this year, that some Quest headset owners were only using the device for a few weeks before letting it gather dust.
But will it stack up when many of us are subscription-saturated? Xbox Game Pass currently costs the same amount but offers all-you-can-eat access to hundreds of titles. It will be £1 more than Quest+ by the middle of July, though. And while we’ve made comparisons to the basic Essential tier of PlayStation Plus, that service also unlocks additional features like cloud storage for saved games and multiplayer.
By March 2023 Meta had reportedly sold almost 20 million Quest headsets, giving Quest+ a moderately large potential audience if it can engage enough lapsed VR fans.
