Oculus Go, Going, Gone

“You’ve told us loud and clear that 6DOF feels like the future of VR. That’s why we’re going all-in, and we won’t be shipping any more 3DOF VR products. We’ll end sales of Oculus Go headsets this year as we double down on improving our offerings for Quest and Rift.”

– Facebook, June 23, 2020

Facebook has announced it will cease accepting new Oculus Go apps and updates in early December 2020 with the last wave of new apps landing mid-December. Assuring users they’ll still have a functional virtual reality headset even after hardware sales stop; Facebook states that Go’s system software will be maintained through 2022, complete with bug fixes and security patches as needed.

Not (Completely) Dead Yet

Lacking access to VR’s much-touted “killer apps” Beat Saber and Half-Life: Alyx, Go users began to realize the extent of the device’s limitations. Go’s 3DoF tracked a user’s head rotation but not their full movement, also omitting hand-tracking to keep its VR experiences modest and affordable. To some, though, this was always going to be a short-lived endeavor. With Oculus Rift and Quest seeing more critical acclaim than Go while routinely selling out stock, the decision to phase out Go is not surprising.

While the impending demise of Oculus’s flagship VR media unit may be bad news for any Go junkies out there, there is a silver lining. This is great news, for example, for anyone hoping to purchase a cut-price Go either for themselves or for a friend or family member. Oculus Go was designed as the ideal entry-level VR device, and now that its already-sub-$150 price-tag will undoubtedly be dropping on the secondary market, we can expect Go to continue bringing new users into VR for some time to come.