AUSTIN, Jan 10 — Employment comedy Job Simulator has accrued one million sales, four years after release; 2018’s Beat Saber did the same after months. How’s that for growth?

One of the first and best-known VR exclusives of the current, post-Oculus wave, Job Simulator has now racked up over one million sales after four years of availability.

The slapstick comedy game has players attempt to fulfil workday duties associated with office admin, catering, retail and automotive repair.

Tasks are laid out by the robotic curators of a job museum, supervisors whose grip on historical reality is often comically loose.

Job Simulator was an early entrant to the home VR scene, releasing alongside (and included with) HTC’s Vive VR system in April 2016.

At that time, Oculus VR had just released a consumer-grade version of its pioneering Oculus Rift headset, with PlayStation preparing its PSVR setup six months later — Job Simulator was, again, a launch title for the PS4’s VR headset.

It wasn’t until May 2019 that Oculus released the standalone Quest, a self-contained, fully wireless variation on its technology headset that didn’t require a separate PC to power it (but could connect to one if so desired).

Once more, Job Simulator was on hand with a bespoke edition ready for the headset’s launch, the implication being that Quest compatibility helped push the VR title past one million sales.

Since the debut of Job Simulator, development studio Owlchemy Labs released Rick and Morty Simulator: Virtual Rick-ality for PC and PlayStation VR in 2017 and Vacation Simulator for the same platforms in 2019.

It was acquired by Google in 2017.

By way of comparison, May 2018’s Beat Saber, a rhythm game in which players slice coloured blocks in time with music tracks, crossed the one million mark just nine months later by March 2019.

It was released first for PC-based headsets (such as the Oculus and HTC systems) in May 2018, and then for PSVR in November 2018, while still in intensive development.

Oculus owner Facebook bought the Beat Saber studio in November 2019. By that point, the Quest headset — and the Beat Saber Android-based Quest edition alongside it — had already been launched.

The difference in time spans could be taken to illustrate the growth of the VR market or, perhaps less charitably, the contrast between the comedic tomfoolery of Job Simulator, closer to Goat Simulator and Surgeon Simulator, and the more straightforward yet no less immersive gameplay of Beat Saber, akin to early 2010s mobile hit Fruit Ninja. — AFP-Relaxnews