

Oculus VR Will Go ‘Full Consumer’ with Samsung by Year’s End - davidst
http://recode.net/2015/03/04/oculus-vr-will-go-full-consumer-with-samsung-by-years-end/

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smacktoward
This has me wondering if Oculus hasn't been spooked a bit by Valve's
announcement that their VR system will be available for purchase in Q4 2015.

I've never heard them position the Samsung Gear VR as the "official" Oculus
consumer solution; it always sounded like to them "full consumer" would mean
an Oculus-branded unit on store shelves, not a unit developed and branded by a
third party that happened to use some Oculus tech. And they've been pretty
clear in the past that 2015 was not going to be the year that Oculus-branded
hardware was going to reach consumers. (Here's an example from back in January
of Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe making noises that even 2016 might be too
optimistic: [http://www.ibtimes.com/oculus-vr-ceo-brendan-iribe-if-you-
do...](http://www.ibtimes.com/oculus-vr-ceo-brendan-iribe-if-you-dont-have-
content-you-dont-sell-hardware-1778140))

Now Valve says they'll be on shelves in time for Christmas, and suddenly
Oculus has a "full consumer" solution ready to go by the same time. Mirabile
dictu! But that "full consumer" solution isn't the "CV1" Oculus-branded
consumer product, but a spiffed up version of Samsung's already-released Gear
VR. Hmmm.

It feels like Valve's announcement put them on the spot; like they felt that
now they had to have _something_ they could put on shelves at the same time,
or cede Valve a chance to lock up the market, and the Gear VR was the only
thing even semi-Oculus that could realistically meet that schedule. So Oculus
anoints Gear VR as their consumer solution, and makes like that was the plan
all along.

