Facebook kills off the Oculus Go for Oculus Quest VR headset

Facebook announced today that it is ending the sales of Oculus Go headsets this year and it will be doubling up on its offerings for Oculus Quest and Rift.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the Oculus Go standalone Virtual Reality (VR) headset at Oculus Connect 4 in San Jose, California, USA in 2017 and it began selling it in May 2018.

Being the company’s least powerful and least expensive virtual reality headset retailing at $199, the headset opened up VR to many more people, and it helped redefine immersive entertainment.

Apparently the success of the Quest released a year later redefined the category, with full head and hand movement powered by the Insight tracking system. The company 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.” 

Oculus said that “we won’t be shipping new features for Oculus Go moving forward, and we’ll no longer accept new Oculus Go apps or app updates into the Store after December 4, 2020. We’ll stop adding new Go apps into the Store after December 18, 2020.”

However, Oculus says “If you own an Oculus Go headset, you’ll still be able to use it even after sales of Oculus Go end. We’ll also continue to maintain the system software with bug fixes and security patches through 2022.”

The Quest’s success has seen people spending more than $100 million on Quest content and more than 10 titles which has generated over $2 million in revenue.