Oculus has discontinued Oculus Go to focus on the Oculus Quest virtual reality headset.
In a blog post, Oculus said it’s ending sales of Oculus Go headsets this year to “double down on improving our offerings for Quest and Rift”. Oculus Go launched in May 2018 as a low-cost standalone VR headset designed to be affordable and accessible. However, it ended up underperforming compared to the more successful Oculus Quest, a completely portable, all-in-one gaming system for casual folk interested in VR games who either don’t want or can’t afford a high-end gaming PC.
Quest launched in May 2019 with over 50 titles available on its store, and Oculus has some fairly strict rules as to what it will allow on it. For example, Quest games need to be quality, finished content. The headset was in hot demand during the run up to the release of Valve’s Half-Life: Alyx – the most successful VR game so far – which only widened the gulf between it and the Go.
“Just past the one-year anniversary of Quest, we’re humbled by its continued success,” Oculus said. “The community response has been overwhelmingly positive, and you’ve told us loud and clear that 6DOF feels like the future of VR. That’s why we’re going all-in, and we won’t be shipping any more 3DOF VR products.”
If you own an Oculus Go headset, you’ll still be able to use it even after sales of Oculus Go end. Oculus said it will continue to support the system software with bug fixes and security patches until 2022. However, it’s finished shipping new features for Oculus Go, and it won’t accept new Oculus Go apps or app updates into the Store after December 4th, 2020.
Oculus Quest is the new hotness, and it’s not hard to see why – Oculus said people have spent more than $100m on Quest content, and more than 10 titles have generated over $2m in revenue on Quest. VR is still a burgeoning industry, but with these statistics and perhaps more games like Half-Life: Alyx coming out, it seems like only the beginning of this new way to play video games.
