The new Oculus Go standalone headset was revealed yesterday at Oculus Connect, the company’s annual developer conference. According to Oculus CTO and legendary programmer John Carmack, developers could have their hands on the $200 standalone mobile headset as soon as next month. As an added piece of the puzzle, developers can also request Oculus Go dev kits via the company’s dev portal starting today.
In Carmack’s famous stream-of-thought keynote speech today, where he touches on almost anything on his mind when it comes to the future of Oculus, he revealed that devs should expect to get their hands on Go starting next month. Since Go wasn’t present at Oculus Connect, it lends credence to the idea that he means Go developer kits, and not Oculus Go demos as such.
Using it as a dedicated media device for the past few months, Carmack says he’s been using the headset to watch Netflix in short intervals, watching 15 minutes of a show at a time and returning back to work. Although the friction of entering VR is much lower when it comes to a dedicated standalone like Oculus Go, he says developers shouldn’t make Go-specific applications, instead targeting both platforms as one in the same.
Both Go and Gear VR feature a single 3DOF controller and will share the same mobile software, says Carmack, although the $200 price-point makes the dedicated standalone headset more ‘giftable’ than a Gear VR of Oculus Rift.
Oculus maintains Go is headed to consumers in “early 2018.”