I'm getting pretty excited about the release of The 7th Guest and, unsurprisingly, reviews are saying that the best graphics are on the PC VR version. Problem is the Meta store page doesn't show it as having RiftS support and it doesn't appear when searching on the 'Link PC VR' section of the store https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/pcvr/
The odd thing is that it's listed on Steam... so not just no cross play buy, but no PC version on the Meta platform. Anyone have any info on this?
I guess it's up to the developer what platform they choose to sell on. Not sure why they'd put a PC version on Steam and not the Meta store. Maybe they thought to avoid confusion with people wanting/thinking it might be cross-buy, keep the separate versions on separate stores.
Pity though... cross-buy can definitely seal the deal for me.
13700K, RTX 4070 Ti, Asus ROG Strix Z790-A Gaming, Corsair H150i Capellix, 64GB Corsair Vengence DDR5, Corsair 5000D Airflow, 4TB Samsung 870 , 2TB Samsung 990 Pro x 2, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, Quest, 2, 3, Pro, Windows 11 Pro 24H2 (10.0.26100)
With no PCVR version of the 7th Guest in the Rift Store, of course there's no cross-buy. I do not expect to see the game in the Rift Store - at least no such announcements have been made by the developers. Also the PCVR version is greatly enhanced - I do not see why devs should give that version away for free - it's worth much more than the very low-end Quest version.
Note that the Steam version supports OpenXR, so you'll get same awesome performance as if bought in the Rift Store.
I took some screenshots from the PCVR version, the game works flawlessly with both my Index and Rift CV1:
Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD "Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"
I guess my question is more about being surprised that the PCVR version is Steam only rather than also being available on the Oculus store for RiftS. As you say, as it's OpenXR I would expect it on both.
Your comment about "the PCVR version is greatly enhanced - I do not see why devs should give that version away for free" is an interesting point. As a developer, I'd almost say the opposite. It's not so much that the PCVR version has 'enhancements', more that the standalone version is more optimised (simpler shaders, lower res textures, polygon reduction, more LODs and imposters). All of which costs more in development time. I think that's where crossbuy comes in. If you've started off with the PCVR version of your game but have spent additional time to optimise it to run on standalone in order to access the wider market of Quest owners (those without the expensive gaming PC) then it makes sense to 'give away' that original version. It's just good marketing, and does entice a lot of players (imho).
Having said that, I'm guessing that now a lot of studios must start from a 'standalone-first' perspective, and if we're lucky go on to polish up the game to look acceptible on PCVR. In which case your argument makes sense. Perhaps that's what's happened here.
