Beat Saber Goes Controller-Free and Supernatural Comes Back in Meta’s Connect Games Slate

"VR gaming is alive and well," Andrew Bosworth said on the Connect stage tonight. It's a confident thing to say eight months after Meta closed three of its own VR studios, and Meta backed it up with a games slate built around playing without controllers.

Most of these games are coming to Meta's new VR Glasses, the $1,299.99 lightweight headset that ships next spring (we covered the hardware separately), and most also run on Quest. The headliner is a Beat Saber you can play with bare hands. The surprise is Supernatural, the fitness app Meta bought and then stopped updating, which returns this fall without Meta.

Beat Saber, without the sabers

Beat Saber's update arrives in spring 2027 on the VR Glasses and Quest, and Meta calls it the biggest the game has ever gotten. Hand tracking works across the whole game, with Touch controllers as an option. The new single-player mode, Flux, replaces sabers with electricity. A "Flux Tether" stretches between your palms to slice rod-shaped notes, you punch through colored ones, and purple notes take both hands. Flux launches with 35 songs from the existing soundtrack and packs, including tracks from Lindsey Stirling, DragonForce, and Camellia, and Meta says more are coming after launch.

The campaign picks up a light story, new missions, and a redesigned menu, and Beat Saber gets its first real progression system, with unlockable sabers, notes, badges, and profile banners. Meta hasn't said whether any of it costs extra. I'm more excited about Flux than confident in it. Camera-based hand tracking has generally had a harder time than controllers with fast, wide swings, and that describes most of a hard Beat Saber map. Punches and a tether held between your hands look like a design built around what hand tracking does well, and we'll find out next spring whether it plays that way.

Supernatural comes back without Meta

Supernatural returns to the Meta Horizon Store this fall from an independent team led by Within founders Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin, with HD environments, new workouts, and new music. Meta says your points, streaks, and badges carry over, which is more than the team could promise in June. Meta agreed to buy Within in 2021 for a reported $400 million or so, fought an FTC lawsuit to close the deal in early 2023, then said this January that Supernatural would get no new content or features. UploadVR reported in June that the independent version costs $20 a month or $200 a year, and the Meta-run app shuts down December 3.

Objection, Tetris, and a heist

Capcom is making Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Dual Destinies VR for the VR Glasses and Quest, due in 2027 as the series' first VR game. You examine crime scenes in 3D, present evidence and point at witnesses with your hands, and shout "Objection!" out loud to trigger it by voice. Fans have been yelling that at their screens for years, and now the game listens.

Tetris Effect: Mixed Realities, from Enhance, comes to the VR Glasses, Quest 3, and Quest 3S in 2027. You play with your hands, and the game works your room's geometry and lighting into its effects. Two Point Hospital is coming to Quest 3 and 3S with hand tracking, so you build the hospital and treat patients by reaching out and grabbing things (UploadVR lists it for the VR Glasses and 2027, too). Payday: Aces High, Fast Travel Games' four-player heist shooter, lands on Quest 3 and 3S later this year with co-op crossplay alongside PC VR players, and an open playtest starts October 19.

75 launch games, plus the Quest back catalog

Meta says the VR Glasses launch with more than 75 games you can play with hand gestures alone, and Xbox Cloud Gaming adds hundreds more. The full Quest library runs too, but plenty of it needs controllers, and the standard VR Glasses box doesn't include any. Plan on buying Touch Plus controllers or pairing the ones from your Quest 3 or 3S.

Who's making the games

In January, Meta closed Twisted Pixel, Sanzaru Games, and Armature Studio as part of Reality Labs cuts, and it has since let Supernatural go back to its founders. Nearly everything Meta showed tonight comes from outside studios like Capcom, Enhance, and Fast Travel Games, with Beat Saber as the big first-party exception. That puts a lot on Flux. If Beat Saber feels right with bare hands next spring, the controller-free pitch holds up. If it doesn't, plenty of VR Glasses owners will end up adding controllers to a $1,300 purchase.