After releasing the Rift S, Oculus’ cheapest VR headset — the Oculus Go — has been in kind of a weird place. It doesn’t offer the flexibility or features of its more expensive siblings, and it wasn’t getting a lot of support or content either, so today Oculus announced it’s discontinuing the Oculus Go entirely.
In a blog posted Tuesday, Oculus says it will focus on the Oculus Quest going forward, stating, “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,” which includes headsets like the Oculus Go.
Today, we announced our plans to sunset Oculus Go as we focus on driving forward the future of VR with 6DOF platforms like Oculus Quest.
We’re also sharing an early look at a new way for developers to distribute Quest apps starting next year: https://t.co/Nauswh4Q41 pic.twitter.com/W2XHD4zNeq
— Oculus Developers (@Oculus_Dev) June 23, 2020
Recently, Oculus Go headsets have become hard to find, with the product often sold out at major third-party retailers. For anyone who does own a Oculus Go, Facebook says it will continue to provide bug fixes and security patches through 2022. The company will stop accepting new Oculus Go apps or updates on December 4, however, and will stop releasing new Go apps on the Oculus Store after December 18, 2020. No new features will be shipped for the Go starting immediately.
As for the Quest, Oculus says it’s working on a new way for developers to distribute content for the device outside of the Oculus Store (and without the need for sideloading). The company says it hopes to launch its new content channel sometime in early 2021.
For people who haven’t dipped their toes into VR yet, positioning the Quest as Oculus’ new entry point makes a lot of sense. Not only does the Quest feature better motion tracking thanks to its support for six degrees of freedom (compared to three degrees of freedom for the Oculus Go), it can also be used as both a standalone VR headset or tethered to a PC using the Oculus Link, the latter of which allows your PC to provide more detailed content and graphics than the Quest can manage on its own.
On top of that, a lot of original Oculus Rift titles have since been ported over to the Oculus Quest, so there’s a much larger library of VR content shared between the more expensive Oculus headsets. Oculus also added support for hand-tracking to the Oculus Quest last year.
The main downside to this is that before it was discontinued, the Oculus Go was selling for under $US200 ($288), while a base Oculus Quest and the Rift S cost twice as much, with starting prices of $US400 ($576), and are both currently sold out on the Oculus Store.
That said, even when it was new, the Oculus Go never really delivered the kind of engaging VR experiences most people wanted. So while the Go was a novel attempt to lower the price of VR headsets, it has since long outlived its usefulness.
Editor’s Note: Release dates within this article are based in the U.S., but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.