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Oculus VR Will Go ‘Full Consumer’ with Samsung by Year’s End
- smacktoward 12y agoThis has me wondering if Oculus hasn't been spooked a bit by Valve's announcement that their VR system will be available for purchase in Q4 2015. I've never heard them position the Samsung Gear VR as the "official" Oculus consumer solution; it always sounded like to them "full consumer" would mean an Oculus-branded unit on store shelves, not a unit developed and branded by a third party that happened to use some Oculus tech. And they've been pretty clear in the past that 2015 was not going to be the year that Oculus-branded hardware was going to reach consumers. (Here's an example from back in January of Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe making noises that even 2016 might be too optimistic: http://www.ibtimes.com/oculus-vr-ceo-brendan-iribe-if-you-dont-have-content-you-dont-sell-hardware-1778140 http://www.ibtimes.com/oculus-vr-ceo-brendan-iribe-if-you-do...) Now Valve says they'll be on shelves in time for Christmas, and suddenly Oculus has a "full consumer" solution ready to go by the same time. Mirabile dictu! But that "full consumer" solution isn't the "CV1" Oculus-branded consumer product, but a spiffed up version of Samsung's already-released Gear VR. Hmmm. It feels like Valve's announcement put them on the spot; like they felt that now they had to have something they could put on shelves at the same time, or cede Valve a chance to lock up the market, and the Gear VR was the only thing even semi-Oculus that could realistically meet that schedule. So Oculus anoints Gear VR as their consumer solution, and makes like that was the plan all along.