Amazon today announced the launch of Prime Video VR on Oculus Quest, Go, and Gear VR. In addition to bringing the entire Prime Video catalog onto the headsets, Amazon is also for the first time adding VR content to its Prime Video library.

Amazon has now followed other major content streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube into VR. The company today announced the launch of the Prime Video VR app which allows Prime members in the US and UK to stream the entire Prime Video content library, and also allows non-members to stream their library of purchased content. The app is available on Oculus Quest, Go, and Gear VR for free. A voice search feature makes it easy to search for content without relying on the virtual keyboard.

Image courtesy Amazon

Amazon is also committing to bringing VR content to Prime Video VR. At today’s launch the library includes 10 “curated” 360 videos, and the company says it has plans to “continue to add new VR-specific titles.” Amazon’s announcement highlighted 3 of the 10 pieces of VR content:

  • INVASION!: This Emmy-award- winning VR experience tells the story of menacing aliens who try to take over Earth and destroy anyone trying to stop them. The citizens of Earth are able to rise up and defeat the invaders – but these citizens aren’t humans. They’re two of the cutest, sweetest, cuddliest creatures of our planet: two little white bunnies, and in this story, you’re one of them!
  • Return to Chernobyl: Go on a haunting journey inside the ruins of Chernobyl, guided by Aleksander Sirota — who was just 9 years old when he survived the disaster. Today, he is a tour guide bringing throngs of visitors through his notorious hometown, despite the still dangerous levels of radiation.
  • Greenland Melting: To understand why Greenland’s glaciers are melting faster and faster, FRONTLINE and NOVA, two flagship PBS series, teamed up with Emblematic Group, xRez Studio and Realtra to bring this story to life as never before. Stand in front of glaciers, fly at low altitudes over some of the world’s most stunning scenery, and dive beneath the ocean’s surface to learn what NASA’s studies are revealing.

It isn’t clear if the app supports anything beyond monoscopic 360 playback for its VR-specific content, but we’d certainly hope to see 3D supported at a minimum, as well as the VR180 format which has been growing in popularity thanks to stereoscopy and increased quality compared to 360 playback.

While Hulu, YouTube, and now Amazon have all expanded their video streaming libraries with 360 content specifically for viewing in VR, Netflix has not.

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HBO meanwhile had launched its first VR apps, HBO NOW VR and HBO GO VR, on Google’s Daydream back in late 2016, but ultimately pulled those services from the platform in January 2019, likely relating to Google’s fading interest in their Android VR initiative.

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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."
  • Froot

    This is an insult to VR users.

    Quest,Go and Gear VR, seriously? And they wonder after why people pirate content and watch it on bigscreen.. cause you dont support our headsets!

    • johngrimoldy

      Agreed 100%! Of course, it’s trivial to just use Virtual Desktop for a very low price and a browser that will play the content.

    • MeowMix

      You can bring up Dash and watch it in VR.

      • Harmoniser

        Hmm not the same as a optimised app. I assume you mean playing Netflix and amazon through a browser? I’ve found on both my Rift S and index playing via virtual desk ect the picture is very juddery.

        And Netflix the picture quality is a bit fuzzy. Prime isn’t too bad and a bit smoother.

        If you know how to make this better please let me know. That’s a genuine question.

    • VR5

      How is it an insult? The Go is by far the best platform to watch 2d streaming content on (low power consumption, quick startup, great resolution and unintrusive SDE). If you absolutely want to watch Prime on PC, nobody is stopping you. On PC, Prime can be viewed in VR out of the box. You couldn’t on Android.

      Your post is aggressive though (maybe don’t accuse others of what you’re doing yourself). Amazon has no obligation to provide the software you want. You can ask them politely (I did three years ago, for exactly this app we’re only getting now).

      • Grateful Fred

        The Go is not the best platform to watch 2D or 3D streaming. It has a fixed IPD range of 62.5mm to 65.5mm just like the Rift S. So if your IPD is in the high 60’s or in the 50s you are screwed. Oculus has enabled hardware IPD adjustment only on the Quest and the range is from 58mm to 74mm. Only about 60% of people have an IPD that is within the limited range on the Go and Rift S.

        • VR5

          It still has great resolution, low power consumption and is comfortable to wear. I get that IPD might be a deal breaker for some (but not all).

  • Sparhawk2k

    “Amazon Launches ‘Oculus Prime Video VR’, Commits to Building up Oculus VR Video Library”

    • “inserts air quotes here”

    • NooYawker

      Who better to team up with than Facebook to data mine their users?

  • I just returned a Rift S cuz it wouldn’t let me play 8K 360 YouTube, and now it’s excluded from this too? There’s like zero high quality content you can easily browse on the thing :-(

    • You are asking for an Industrial Revolution in the VR Landscape overnight!! Give it some time mate! It’s NOT gonna get to those ridiculous quality extremes all the sudden like magic!! Lol, no way! 8K isn’t even widely supported for standard non-VR flat screen monitors, your expecting WAY too much too fast!! It’ll get to Retina Resolution one day, and one day soon, just enjoy VR for what it is now, because it’s come quite a long way since Oculus DK1 kit! Right now we’re just trying to break VR into the Mainstream marketplace so that it doesn’t sink and utterly fail into Oblivion! Of course it needs improvements, but most importantly, in needs user interest! In order for those improvements you seek to ever become a reality, it needs more demand, high demand always benefits the Consumer in a competitive marketplace! It is a Market Bubble, in Economics, this is the stage of “Adoption” just past Early-prototype-Adoption, but with full fledged contenders in the marketplace which means it’s quickly getting to stage of rampant Improvements at an accelerated rate, until it reaches Full Market Maturity as an established product. Keep in mind none of this existed a few years back, they not only had to make these, they needed to figure out core technologies VR needed to just exist in a general State of bare-bones-functionality! They had to do all the research and Developments just to get a reasonable inside out tracking system, and Oculus Insight or Valve’s Guardian System! It took the industry off course a bit for a few years getting those core basic functions figured out, developed, and put into place before VR could ever reach the stage of “Vast-Improvements” on things like Resolution, Comfort, and other things that us Users / Consumers deem as “Most-Important,” but now that they’ve, these companies that is, gotten most that boring stuff out of the way, those core technologies, they can address and focus attention and resources at improving things such as supporting 8K 360 video and what not, but keep in mind, it’s not even just the devices, but the content creators catching up as well, so good luck finding many folks who have the $200,000 plus dollar camera equipment to shoot 8K 360 videos, and I bet a lot of the ones that do exist are “Fake” doctored Frankenstein creations made in After-Effects of various 4K or lower shots combined together which is not nearly the same a High Resolution Sensor and Industrial Light Field VR Cameras that natively capture that high resolution detail, and are currently the size of a studio room and like half a million dollars! PFFF! Some Folks are just very impatient and or “Greedy” with “I WANT MORE!!” kind of attitude.. Crimeny! GIVE IT TIME!! It’s coming way sooner than you think, just wait a bit buddy! It’s not like it’s gonna be 10+ years from now! It’ll be within the next 3-4 years!

  • PJ

    Hopefully it’s got some actual VR content, and not just a flat Virtual screen

  • Mateusz Pawluczuk

    Cool but these are free VR experiences. If they offered paid stuff like “The Great C” or “Space Explorers” that would be great way to make people use their app instead of deafult browser.

  • Jarilo

    Guys, the platforms make sense. This isn’t stereoscopic 3d stuff I think. It’s just your Amazon video account. It makes sense it’s for these devices since on PC VR just log into your Amazon Prime and watch it on your dash, big screen, or numerous other 3rd party software lol

  • paleion

    Downloaded it, linked it to my Prime account, watched the prime content on the bigscreen. Its just Primes version of the Netflix VR app. Now, if they would add 3D content, that would be great.

  • It’s still puzzles me that the most used apps on mobile VR headsets are the ones offering video streaming…

  • Renzo V

    watched Terminator .. the whole movie in my Gear VR :V

  • Jerald Doerr

    Has anyone tried with Revive? I’m getting a Lil jealous with all the Facebook exclusives…