Back at CES, Oculus announced that Chinese electronics giant Xiaomi would exclusively  bring its own branded version of the standalone Oculus Go headset to China. The headset will support the Oculus Mobile SDK, meaning existing Gear VR and future Oculus Go apps can be packaged up for sale to the Chinese VR market through Xiaomi’s Mi VR store.

The Xiaomi Mi VR Standalone headset is identical hardware to the forthcoming Oculus Go, the $200 standalone headset that Oculus announced late last year. Xiaomi will exclusively sell and control the headset in China while the Oculus Go will be sold in other regions.

Both headsets support the Oculus Mobile SDK, the software which currently allows developers to build apps for Samsung’s Gear VR headset (which runs Oculus’ software and store).

SEE ALSO
Oculus Go Headsets Are Now Shipping to Developers

The Mi VR Standalone will draw content from Xiaomi’s Mi VR store, but full compatibility with the Oculus Mobile SDK means that apps previously built for Gear VR or Oculus Go can be readily transplanted to the Mi VR store for sale into the Chinese VR market. The only major caveats is that the Mi VR Standalone won’t support the Oculus Avatar SDK or Platform SDK.

Apps built with the Oculus Mobile SDK also won’t support Xiaomi’s existing VR customer base from the 1.2 million older VR headsets that the company confirmed it has sold, which are claimed to be used an average of 29 minutes per day. In order to support those other headsets, developers will need to build using the Mi VR SDK (which supports Unity and Unreal).

Image courtesy Xiaomi, Oculus

Xiaomi’s developer FAQ says that revenue share on the Mi VR store is a standard 70% to developers. However, to encourage developers to localize their content to best fit the Chinese VR audience, the company says it is “aiming” for 100% revenue share for “fully localized” titles throughout 2018.

The company also says it will offer some localization support: “For developers who do localization in house, Xiaomi will provide review support. And we can further help by introducing dubbing actors/actresses and translators, and help review all of these for developers.”

– – — – –

The Xiaomi Mi VR Standalone is expected to become available around the same time as the Oculus Go headset, which is planned for “early 2018” and priced at $200. The introduction of the headset to China puts the company in direct competition with HTC’s standalone Vive Focus headset which launched in China just last week.

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Lucidfeuer

    Xiaomi is the only chinese device company I actually expect more from. There’s no added value to release the same limited Oculus Go especially in China where they’re already fiddling with tons of mods of more advanced specs.

    What I mean is, it’s possible for Xiaomi to release a better mobile headset than Oculus, Google and other did, they have been doing more than copycrap ware devices like Huaweï, Oppo or Vivo.

  • That’s an awesome news: let worldwide developers to access the huge Chinese market is an incredible move and can help VR developers to survive this difficult moment.

    • Matthew

      Gℴogle giving all people 97 dollars/h to work online .. Do work only for just few time and spend greater time together with your relatives … Any person can also do this best post…on weekend I purchased a top of the range Infiniti after just getting $7919 this last month .it’s certainly nicest-work but you may not forgive yourself if you do not get this.!jh55z:➯➯➯ http://GoogleWageEnergyJournalsJobsReport1/easy/jobs ♥♥j♥♥♥x♥♥b♥f♥♥♥b♥♥p♥♥k♥a♥♥♥d♥i♥♥♥n♥♥♥i♥♥♥l♥♥♥y♥♥♥q♥♥d♥p♥♥n♥♥♥s♥f♥♥p♥♥♥r♥♥h♥f♥♥a:::::!ef833e:wkyuz