After months of speculations, Facebook-owned VR company Oculus finally confirmed the release date of the first commercial model of its virtual reality headset. “Extremely excited to announce that the Oculus Rift will be shipping Q1 2016! We can’t wait to get it in your hands,” tweeted Nate Mitchell, vice president of product at Oculus VR, earlier today.
Although no further details on pricing or content partners have been made available as of yet, the announcement mentions that the first commercial models will be focused on gaming and entertainment with more use cases to come later, heralding a boost in consumer-facing VR technologies soon beyond just at-event experience and activations. We expect VR to be a niche market in 2016 in the same way that smartphones were a niche market in 2007, therefore it’d be wise for brands to prepare a VR strategy to stay ahead of the curve.
We here at the Lab are always looking out for new developments in the VR space, and currently we have two VR headsets—an Oculus Rift and a Samsung Gear—ready for demo in the Lab. Our staff got to demo the new Crescent Bay prototype at CES this year and can help explain the differences between what developers have their hands on now and what will be released in less than a year.
Virtual reality is something that has to be experienced to be understood. So come by the Lab and get a VR demo to see just how engaging it can be, and understand why consumers would be excited by this technology.