Everyone’s favourite social network, Facebook, holds an annual event during the Spring primarily focused on developers. Of late F8 has been used as a platform to announce bring updates and new features, not only for developers but also the public at large. F8 2019 will take place across April/May of next year, and there’s the slight possibility that the owner of Oculus may use the conference to launch Oculus Quest.
This is by no means a fanciful notion. The upcoming standalone headset was first unveiled during Oculus Connect 5 (OC5) a few months ago, with the company stating a release date of Spring 2019. While the timing works well enough, the other major factor is that Oculus Go was itself launched during F8 2018 to much fanfare.
Honestly, the timing couldn’t be much better, with the only cravat being the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019, the previous month. As VRFocus has previously written, GDC tends to be much more favored by Facebook/Oculus as an opportunity to make virtual reality (VR) announcements and put an actual display on rather than the bigger – and presumably more expensive – Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in June.
Additionally, not only is a launch date yet to be confirmed but also all the videogames that’ll be available on day one. Mark Zuckerberg mentioned at OC5 there would be fifty titles on launch day, with following already confirmed: Robo Recall, The Climb and Moss. Also coming to the headset are VR Furballs, Project Tennis Scramble,Face Your Fears 2, Dead & Buried Arena, Rave Runner, and Star Wars: Vader Immortal.
Regarding F8 2019 in general, Facebook’s vice president of partnerships Ime Archibong said in a blog post: “This year we celebrate the developers, creators, entrepreneurs and innovators building with our platform and tools. There will be networking opportunities, deep-dive sessions, and product demos, all showcasing how technology can enable the best of what people can do together.”
The Facebook Developers Conference is due to take place from 30th April – 1st May 2019, in San Jose, California. For further updates on the event, keep reading VRFocus.