Facebook may have made a big song and dance announcing Oculus Go at F8 earlier this month but that doesn’t necessarily mean sales – apart from the VR die hards. While the headset has seen a positive response from the media the company needs to do what it did with the Oculus Rift, make sure its on demonstration at plenty of retail stores for the general public to try. Well today Facebook has gone one better, opening a pop-up store just for the Oculus Go.
The store is open today in New York, located in Manhattan’s SoHo shopping district at 503 Broadway, and only open today reports AdWeek, so if you’re nearby and fancy a demo on the latest standalone headset then you’ll need to be quick.
The store has Oculus Go’s displayed on shelves like a sneaker retailer, so there are plenty to go around depending on how busy the place is. Facebook will likely showcase a number of different virtual reality (VR) apps, whether that’s videogames, the new social features the company has been heavily promoting or being able to watch TV shows on big screens through apps like Hulu.
Oculus Go is Facebook’s focused attempt at broadening the VR audience by creating a cheaper more user friendly head-mounted display (HMD). Not only is it half the price of the Oculus Rift which retails for $399 USD, the Oculus Go is completely self contained, no PC is needed and as such there are no cables. Devices like Samsung Gear VR need a compatible smartphone to operate and still need headphones attaching, while Oculus Go has speakers built-in (there’s still a headphone jack just in case).
At $199 for the base 32GB model, and over 1000 apps available thanks to its compatibility with the Oculus Mobile SDK (and there for Gear VR content), the Oculus Go already has a massive content library. Also showcasing how far Oculus has come in its VR hardware developments, the headsets lenses and screen offer greater clarity than Oculus Rift, helping to reduce the dreaded screendoor effect.
It’s unclear if Facebook plans on opening any further pop-up store in the US or further afield. If that happens, VRFocus will let you know.