Article by Marcus Siu

SAN JOSE, CA, OCTOBER 11, 2017 – At its fourth developer conference in San Jose, Oculus announced its newest and most affordable VR headset, called Oculus.  The standalone device will ship in early 2018 starting at $199.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this to the crowd of 2,900, where he announced new hardware, software, and content that will bring even more people into VR and expand the ways we work, play, and—of course—connect.

Zuckerberg hopes this will bring VR to the masses.  Hopefully, a path to a billion people.

“If we’re going to get a billion people in virtual reality”, Zuckerberg remarked, “we have to keep working on both affordability and quality, but we also have to find the sweet spot in the middle that high quality affordable experience that doesn’t tether you to a PC.”

This certainly keeps the price of experiencing VR down to a minimum, as with the Oculus Rift, a super exclusive high end computer is needed, and that can certainly run up to a few thousand dollars on depending on how much power is needed.

Also no longer will you be need to snap an expensive phone for the Samsung GearVR inside it…which doesn’t even have motion tracking in it anyway.

Oculus also showcased updates to its Santa Cruz prototype, including new positionally tracked controllers with six degrees of freedom that bring the power of Rift and Touch to the standalone category.

The company offered a sneak peek into Oculus Venues, a new experience coming next year that lets people watch live concerts, sports, and movie premieres with thousands of other people around the world.