Meta acquires well-liked VR train app Supernatural, an indication of issues to come back

By On Oct 30, 2021

On Friday, Meta (formerly Facebook) announced that it had purchased Within VR and its practice game Supernatural, one of the best Oculus Quest 2 games available today. Supernatural remains an independent group within the umbrella of Meta Reality Labs.

Supernatural was one of the first VR games to be charged for a subscription. You pay a high monthly fee in exchange for new daily workouts and licensed music. Other VR practice apps tend to use original electronic soundtracks with more general sounds, which reduces costs. But Supernatural’s live coaching and new popular music made it a popular brand – and today’s acquisition made sure it stays exclusively on Oculus platforms.

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“Our partnership with Meta will have more resources to expand and bring you more music, more creative ways to exercise, more features and more social experiences in VR,” said CEO Chris Milk and Head of Fitness Leanne Pedante in a statement.

Right now, Meta’s best asset is the Oculus VR platform, but it’s pretty niche and geared towards gamers. For the Metaverse to be successful, it needs more mainstream, social experiences that can be enjoyed with either VR or AR and by both older and younger generations. Distance learning courses appear to be tailor-made to lure the elderly onto an unfamiliar platform.

As the Supernatural game will be improved for virtual reality in the coming years, you shouldn’t be surprised if Meta finally makes its teachers visible through its AR glasses as well. And we certainly won’t be surprised if it continues to acquire game studios to keep the best exclusive VR games on Quest hardware.

Meta also recently teamed up with Vertigo Games for five future Oculus titles, some of which will take place in Deep Silver IP worlds like Saints Row, Metro or Dead Island. And it’s working with Rockstar on a Grand Theft Auto VR game. The meta-verse is acquiring popular game brands, likely in an attempt to get more mainstream gamers interested in trying VR.

This acquisition also gives Meta access to Within, who entered virtual reality on the ground floor in 2014 and filmed dozens of 360º documentaries and experiences. We are curious to see if Meta will use this team to promote Metaverse events such as concerts.