Today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Samsung announced the brand-new Gear VR with Controller, with 70 titles coming soon. The controller is said to add a deeper level of immersion, using motion sensors, and an intuitive touch pad and trigger input.

Announced today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and revealed on the Oculus Blog, Samsung’s new Gear VR has received a major new feature in the form of a motion controller.

The Gear VR Controller is a compact wand that uses motion sensors, a circular touchpad and trigger to interact with Gear VR content. With integrated home, volume and back buttons, the controller will be compatible with all existing Gear VR apps, but ‘more than 70’ titles designed for the controller are in development.

gear-vr-mwc-2017The single-handed controller has clear similarities with the controller that comes with Daydream VR, Google’s mobile VR platform. This input parity will certainly help developers create mobile VR apps that support motion controllers across both platforms. What’s more, every Gear VR shipped will include the controller as standard, a reassuring move for potential developers looking to support the new devices.

The new Gear VR headset still supports the same smartphones as the existing model, suggesting that the controller could be available separately for owners of the current hardware.

This story is breaking – more details will be added as we receive them.

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Dominic Brennan
The trial version of Microsoft’s Monster Truck Madness probably had something to do with it. And certainly the original Super Mario Kart and Gran Turismo. A car nut from an early age, Dominic was always drawn to racing games above all other genres. Now a seasoned driving simulation enthusiast, and former editor of Sim Racer magazine, Dominic has followed virtual reality developments with keen interest, as cockpit-based simulation is a perfect match for the technology. Conditions could hardly be more ideal, a scientist once said. Writing about simulators lead him to Road to VR, whose broad coverage of the industry revealed the bigger picture and limitless potential of the medium. Passionate about technology and a lifelong PC gamer, Dominic suffers from the ‘tweak for days’ PC gaming condition, where he plays the same section over and over at every possible combination of visual settings to find the right balance between fidelity and performance. Based within The Fens of Lincolnshire (it’s very flat), Dominic can sometimes be found marvelling at the real world’s ‘draw distance’, wishing virtual technologies would catch up.
  • Speculation

    They are dropping oculus and going for daydream. Will be more evident when they announce S8.

    • Jim Cherry

      more likely they are dropping oculus but going their own way. They’ll still keep a gear store with backwords compatibility with oculus/gear apps. If we’re lucky they’re new platform will work with daydream apps but there is almost no way Samsung wants to open their phones up to daydream hardware.

    • AbbyZFresh

      Why would they drop oculus? Oculus has more support and apps than Daydream has right now.

    • Dllemm

      Samsung always teaches Google how to make hardware & software.

  • I’m sure interested in hearing if they actually plan Daydream support, it would be kind of neat to use the same headset and controller for both Oculus and Daydream apps, not sure if that would go well with their agreement with Oculus though considering the GearVR still says “Powered by Oculus”. That said, just as mentioned, I sure hope I can buy this separately as I have the most recent GearVR before this one.

    • Gerald Terveen

      You can and it is compatible – Oculus has answered it on the official Blog.

    • Mane Vr

      oculus has never block their costumer from playing 3rd party app and games don’t see why they would now.. this might be helpful for them getting more games to home too.

  • I’ve tried Daydream and found the remote super-comfortable and useful… they had to answer some way. There were rumors in the last days and these rumors have been confirmed…

  • fuyou2

    Another piece of shit!! Stop marketing this crap as a VR device, same goes for the other piece of shit the Daydream, keep on dreaming..

    • Dllemm

      The gear VR is an excellent starter headset for VR, I’m sure 5 million others would agree. Games like Face your fears was complimented by John Carmack for full resolution with Unreal Engine use. It scared the crap out of me. Keep talking and nobody explodes is a fun party game. There’s also Gun Club, Oculus theater, Zion experience and others. It was fun enough to make me buy a PSVR and another $200 in VR games like Batman, Job Simulator, etc. Everybody wins.

      • Dllemm

        GearVR came free with Galaxy S7 phones for a limited time, and is currently on sale at Amazon for $44. With the additional gyroscopes it is the best VR experience south of $400.

    • Hans

      It is a VR device and should be marketed as a VR device.

  • VR Geek

    So it is 3DOF then?

  • OgreTactics

    And lo, you don’t realise how much of a bad news this is for VR…this is simply unacceptable for multi-billionaire companies with thousands of employees to not do their job which is to conceive and develop relevant products in order to secure more real-value profit both short-term and middle/long-term on newer markets sectors.

    The shit plastic design, annoying plugging/snapping mechanism, lack of 4K, minimum 120°FOV anamorphic lenses, SMI eye-tracking, even the stupid headband design I though we were through with, and of course, of course the lack of basic head tracking in 2017 is just unacceptable.

    There are little start-ups and countless nobody developers doing the job of these corporations with no budget, yet for the sake of incredibly money-hungry operational cost manager who want to please thieves stockholder in saving measly additional component costs by not iterating design or including a basic fucking cam with cheap leds for head-tracking is unacceptable.

    2017 is going to be a bad year for VR because unlike 2016 which was supposedly the big “consumer” launch year, who is going to buy Oculus/Vive during these months until fall, and now who’s going to even hope they have a use or application for mobile VR with this shit? Watch it happen…

    • Hans

      Samsung GearVR is intended to be a cheap mobile solution that works with Samsung phones and for that purpose I think it does a pretty good job. Of cause there are only so much you can expect to get out of a smartphone, but given this limitation I think (me included) you still get a lot of VR for the money.

      • Anthony Kenneth Steele

        the phones camera could do inside out tracking if the processor is even up to the job

        • OgreTactics

          Vslam inside-out tracking with back camera somewhat works (and of course the processor is up to the task, it’s non-taxing) but is somewhat not really accurate.

          Still I’ll take that over no-headtracking at all. All it takes is a fucking IR Cam and a few cheap leads, the fact that they didn’t even input that in the next GearVR even though they leaked a patent showcasing such system, in 2017 is fucking enraging.

      • OgreTactics

        800$ for a GearVR system is still a considerable budget (given this is the same price as a PSVR system).

        But that’s not the point at all. Why the fuck wouldn’t Samsung actually solidify and capitalise on their VR incentive instead of settling for a “cheap VR mobile solution”?

        Also it did a good job in 2016 for introducing people to a few gadget VR apps, but it’s unusable every day, even as a portable Cinema/Netflix device without head-tracking and put-n-lock design.

    • Anthony Kenneth Steele

      gear vr is cheap, what are you crying about.

      • Sebastien Mathieu

        yes exactly???

  • FRED

    I have a note 4 – the biggest and best phone up to now , no exploding batteries, sd card, removable battery, 5.5 screen, and it has the crappiest VR of them all! My VR unit has been siting on the shelf now for over a year PURE CRAP!