The end for Oculus Go is nigh. The latest Oculus SDK (v19/1.51) no longer supports the company’s first true standalone VR headset.

The company says in the SDK’s developer release notes that both Unity and Unreal Engine support for Oculus Go has officially been dropped. Facebook says developers can still use Oculus Integration v18.0 or prior, although this effectively puts another small fire under developers to either finish up their Go projects soon, or migrate them to Quest.

All of this should come as no surprise to Go developers however, as Facebook announced back in late June that it would be retiring Oculus Go. While the headset’s system software will still receive bug fixes and security patches through 2022, the company said it would be starting down the path of phasing out the headset, culminating in a complete content pipeline freeze in December 2020.

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Despite its lack of positional tracking and motion controllers, the cheap and cheerful 3DOF headset attracted many VR newcomers thanks to its positioning as an accessible, casual content device. Starting at $200 for the 32GB version, and later knocked down to $150 in January 2020, it still represents the cheapest way to get into reasonably good VR.

Although it was clearly priced to fly off the shelves at launch in May 2018 and obviously also resonated with consumers during holiday rushes, Facebook has said that Oculus Go will be their last 3DOF device, instead favoring Quest as they move forward into an all-6DOF future.

We’re hoping the fabled Oculus Quest 2 brings along with it some price reductions to the previous Quest, which is currently priced at its original launch price tag of $400/$450. Maybe eventually a 6DOF device can fill that low price point too, although there would need to be a hell of a price cut.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • xyzs

    Wow they discard their product very fast.

    Hope that means that they want Quest to become their solid and central plateform gathering all efforts and attention and that it will last.

  • Donald Dunbar

    Any news on opening up release channels for Quest apps that wouldn’t pass the current application process? A lot of my clients are 360 filmmakers and right now it doesn’t seem like there’s a good path for apps primarily meant to serve video.

    • One path is to submit the app to Oculus with the note “For keys submission only” in the comment submission section. This will then have a chance to be approved by Oculus, but the app is only installable via key or invite to a specific build channel. Just a thought!

    • Ad

      WebXR is probably their best bet if no one has a curated route. Good for them that there’s not really a particular reason that has to be on quest, right?

  • flamaest

    Glad I returned this POS.

    • asdf

      i own a lot of headsets from gear to the index and the go was still a great product for its price… the fact you call it a pos just shows how fucking stupid you are.

      • Ad

        Call it a personal media display and it’s fine. But it was my first introduction to VR and I walked away having zero interest in ever touching VR again. I saw it’s limitations and assumed they were the limits of VR both consciously and unconsciously.

  • Now just get that solution working so my GO app can finally run on the Quest.

  • Ad

    I read that twitter thread where that developer said that many new devs wished 3doF had stayed because it was an cheaper way to get into XR development. I am not sure if that’s true since it seems like 3doF is a very different animal to 6doF so I would wonder if you would learn two wrong lessons for every right one from working on that.

    Also, following VR dev twitter reveals a weird weird world filled with nauseating thought leaders (she was fine, I mean much worse), crazy rifts in expectations and attitudes, and just difficult realities and all kinds of off hopes. I left felt like while consumers definitely don’t understand devs’ situation, devs may not understand the world consumers inhabit either.

    • As a dev, I laughed at the last sentence, because it is true. Devs & enthusiasts in general have very different requirements from the average consumers: e.g. many techies hate Apple, but most of the average consumers love Apple products.

      BTW I think 3DOF has still a place in some enterprise applications (e.g. for education in China), but for consumers, well, not much

      • Ad

        I think enthusiasts are a mixed bag. Like I know some are kind of out of touch, but others are right there playing Pavlov and making art, and can tell when something has too much friction or is too locked down. But if you’re someone waxing poetically about how VR is going to be another plane of reality where wars will stop and everyone will do their taxes in VR turbotax and current VR is so dumb, then you’re a special kind of person. Just a lot of people who want their wild words to come true and then get rewarded for it.

        I think education might not be the best use case outside of china because it means that most likely there is a small amount of software for it, only from specific vendors, and it will end up being more primitive then what you have at home. And not being able to move your head can hurt things like Calculus and biology, where it would help a lot to be able to properly look at and interact with these things.

  • The Go is Going away

    • Sven Viking

      It’s time to Go.

      • Ron

        Going going…

        • Dave

          Wake me up before you…

  • ¥DK¥

    So they’re shitting on every customer that has a Go…. Nice….

    • Sven Viking

      I do admit, it seems like a kind of abrupt way to shut down the content pipeline. To a certain extent, if some devs still want to release stuff and there are still Go users to buy it, why stop them? I guess they don’t want staff working on assessing the app submissions though.

  • martin

    thats pretty much all its good for, if one only wants to watch porn, Oculus Go is the one to buy.

  • Rogue Transfer

    Once the Quest 2 launches, it’s looking likely it’ll be: “So long, S!” Likely at the 2 year mark, next March.

    I wonder what Lenovo will do then? Having ditched their own headset to jump to making the Rift S, it’s looking like they’ll be left out the market by Facebook soon. Since, the Quest will be discontinued on release of the Quest 2, and the former is not manufactured by Lenovo, nor does it seem likely the sequel will be either.

  • dk