Facebook's Bosworth: VR the 'Next Frontier For Human Connection'
*By Alex Heath*
Despite a consensus that VR headset adoption has slowed, Facebook ($FB) isn’t giving up on the nascent technology.
The social network on Wednesday announced a new VR headset, the Oculus Quest, at its annual Oculus Connect conference in San Jose, Calif. Unlike the Oculus Rift, the new model doesn’t require a connected PC to operate. It costs $399 and will ship in the spring of 2019.
“I really believe in this technology as the next frontier for human connection,” Facebook’s vice president of VR and AR, Andrew Bosworth, told Cheddar.
“There is no substitute for being physically present with somebody, but we can probably do better than the technology we have today in video conferencing and telepresence for phones. We really believe that this can be a tremendously powerful tool for connecting humans at a distance.”
Oculus Quest represents Facebook’s biggest bet yet to get one billion people to try virtual reality, an ambitious goal that CEO Mark Zuckerberg set at last year’s Oculus Connect conference.
This year, much of Facebook’s efforts in VR are focused on social features that encourage people to use headsets together, along with a slew of new VR games and entertainment titles.
Facebook has never shared sales numbers for Oculus. But the company did say on Wednesday that 80 percent of people who buy its lower-tier Oculus Go headset are new to its VR ecosystem. A [recent IDC report](https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS44257218) predicted that 212,000 Oculus Go’s have been shipped since the product was first made available last October.
Facebook’s Oculus announcements come after a string of notable executive departures at the company, including the recent resignation of Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Other departures include WhatsApp’s co-founders, Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch, communications and policy chief Elliot Schrage, and vice president of partnerships Dan Rose.
Bosworth is among Facebook’s longest-serving executives, having joined more than 10 years ago. Before taking over the company’s hardware efforts last year, he led the ads business and helped launch important initiatives like the News Feed. He’s not worried about the apparent turnover.
“If you look at the record, we’re actually seeing people staying at Facebook much longer than is normal in Silicon Valley,” he said. “Silicon Valley does tend to be a place where people move around a lot.”
Bosworth declined to discuss Facebook’s forthcoming “Portal” video chat devices for the home, [which will be announced soon](https://cheddar.com/videos/facebooks-portal-video-chat-device-to-be-announced-next-week). The devices will represent Facebook’s first foray into selling consumer hardware outside of the Oculus brand when they are made available in the coming weeks.
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/facebook-announces-new-vr-headset-oculus-quest).
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