In case you don’t acknowledge the title Oculus, it’s the corporate that kicked off the trendy VR period. Fb (now Meta) was so impressed by the Oculus Rift developer equipment and sudden revival of curiosity in VR that it acquired the corporate in 2014. Now Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is again with plans for an additional VR headset.
Whereas Luckey shared no particular particulars and even the title of the system, the announcement will little question create a buzz within the trade. The X (previously Twitter) submit got here as a reply to VR analyst Brad Lynch’s response to Luckey’s X submit concerning the ModRetro Chromatic, an upgraded reinterpretation of the wildly standard GameBoy Coloration handheld console.
Luckey disputed the suggestion that he’d misplaced curiosity in growing a VR headset by breaking the information of the approaching announcement at Augmented World Expo (AWE) that he was engaged on a brand new head-mounted show (HMD).
I’m going to be saying the truth that I’m engaged on a brand new HMD at AWE!
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) June 3, 2024
The Oculus founder hasn’t at all times agreed with Meta’s strategy to VR. The 2 parted methods in 2017 for quite a lot of causes. Luckey’s 2018 weblog submit “Free isn’t low cost sufficient” didn’t particularly point out Oculus, however advised low-cost headsets weren’t one of the simplest ways to advance digital actuality.
In 2019, Meta’s first Quest VR headset launched for $300 and noticed average gross sales, failing to interrupt via to mainstream avid gamers. The 2020 Quest 2 introduced vital upgrades and stored the engaging $300 price ticket. Whereas it’s nonetheless the world’s hottest and among the best VR headsets to start out with, gross sales had been nonetheless surprisingly low.
Luckey’s prediction that low-cost headsets wouldn’t encourage ongoing use proved to be appropriate and Meta has but to launch one other funds mannequin. The favored Quest 3 begins at $500 and options a way more compelling mixed-reality expertise and higher-resolution shows, together with higher consolation.
Maybe Luckey had a greater understanding of what the general public needed from VR within the early days. It stays to be seen whether or not the Oculus founder can achieve immediately’s market with competitors coming from the ultra-premium Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional, the inexpensive Meta’s Quest 3, Sony’s console-supported PSVR2, and the midrange HTC Vive XR Elite, none of which existed when Luckey was growing the Rift VR headset.
