The Oculus Go might be coming very, very soon
Hey, remember the Oculus Go?
Neither did we -- until we saw two photos shared to Reddit by user "bekris" (spotted by Upload VR) of what Bekris claims is the Oculus Go's developer kit. We'll be honest, this doesn't look like developer kit packaging; it totally looks like retail packaging.
Bekris claims the photos were tweeted by Jesper Gaarsdal, software engineer at Unity Studios, and by the Twitter account of Unity Studios itself. Both tweets were removed shortly after being posted.
If the photo is legitimate, the retail release of the first ever phone-free standalone VR device could be just around the corner. And the first buyers could have over 1000 apps, games, and movies at their fingertips.
Here's what we know about the Oculus Go. It's being manufactured by Xiaomi, the Chinese parent company of the Mi Mix 2 smartphone. It's powered by the Snapdragon 821 Mobile VR Platform, Qualcomm's first chip to support Google's Daydream platform. It will cost $199. It has the same field of view as the Oculus Rift and built-in spatial audio..
With this leaked photo, we may tentatively be able to add "1000 apps" to that list, including Netflix, Hulu, Facebook, Fox, New York Times, Discovery, and Jurassic World. This is an impressive number, though it's important to note that not all (or even most) of these apps will be original content for the Oculus Go. Oculus Go is binary with Gear VR, Samsung's VR headset developed in collaboration with Oculus. This means that the 1000+ apps compatible with Gear VR will also be compatible with the Oculus Go upon its launch.
We can also predict that the device will have 32 gigabytes of storage, and the package's specification indicates that we may be able to expect multiple standalone headsets with different amounts of storage.
We can't be sure that these photos are legitimate, but the sources are certainly real people who could be expected to have inside knowledge on the subject. If they're real, the Oculus Go could be in stores before we know it, with a ton of content to boot.
Topics Oculus Virtual Reality
Monica wrote for Mashable's Tech section with a focus on retail, internet of things, and the intersections of technology and social justice. She holds a degree in creative writing from Brown University, and has previously written for Dow Jones Media, the New York Post, Yahoo Finance, and others. In her free time, she can be found attempting to cook Asian food, buying board games, and looking for new hobbies.
