The Oculus Quest will be released Tuesday, May 21. This is a rare case of a product living up to the hype. This easy-to-use $399 all-in-one VR system is fantastic. The headset is light, comfortable, and the optics look every bit as good as the the tethered Vive and Rift headsets. I could wear it for hours if the battery could stand it (quibble: it can't). The Quest will launch with fifty titles. Importantly there's plenty of free content, such as the massive multiplayer game world of Rec Room, VR chat, and media players that give you a big screen movie-theater like experience. Bravo, Oculus.
The Quest's world-scale free roaming capability isn't being used by these launch titles, but it's mixed reality capable, even with its crude outward facing cameras. I predict this will be its most important, disruptive innovation, and will unleash a†new wave of creativity. This also suggests Facebook is rumored AR glasses might be something insanely great.
Analysts' sales predictions are a conservative 1-2 M units this year, unsurprising since no one yet knows how to explain VR's consumer value proposition in an easily apprehensible way. But maybe Oculus doesn't have to. According to Nielsen, there are 162M households with game consoles in the US. Oculus only needs to lure a sliver of them to exceed expectations.
On the cusp of this watershed event, Oculus executives shuffled into Facebook. Jason Rubin and Hugo Barra are heading to new positions inside the mothership. The moves point towards Oculus becoming less of an independent actor and more integrated into the larger Facebook team.†
Nomadic VR launching new Las Vegas location. Nomadic specializes in location based VR, with their flagship location in Orlando. The new Vegas installation is part of the entertainment complex AREA 15. Nearby inside AREA 15 is immersive art installation Meow Wolf. The Santa Fe artist collective turned into alternative theme park creators was the subject of this excellent NY Times profile last week.†
Magic Leap acquires Mimesys to bolster telepresence capabilities of its platform. Mimesys are the creators of a mixed reality telepresence app for the Magic Leap One. The team now joins Magic Leap and their telepresence work will be integrated into the platform.
Unity, which makes the worldís most popular game engine will have 6 BN dollar valuation when it closes its next funding round. Unityís primary competitor is Epic Gamesí Unreal Engine. Epic is also behind the megahit Fortnight, and raised 1.25 BN in October.†
Digilens closes $50 million series C funding.†Digilens has raised the recent round of funding for further development of augmented reality displays. This raise brings the total venture capital raised by Digilens to over $100 million.
Vive Pro Eye now available in Europe starting at Ä1,700.†The near $2,000 bundle includes everything from a pair of controllers and SteamVR 2.0 base stations, to the Tobii eye tracking enabled headset itself. The headsetís launch in China is slated for May 24th.
"This Week In XR" is written and edited with Michael Eichenseer.
