Oculus Go Aims to Be Facebook's VR Gateway for the Masses
*By Alisha Haridasani*
With its sights trained on a broader market for its virtual reality headsets, Facebook’s Oculus began selling its mid-range device on Tuesday.
The Oculus Go, which is available for sale on the Oculus website, Amazon, and in Best Buy stores, starts at $199, about half the price of the company’s high-end Rift product. The company also produces the cheaper Oculus Gear VR, which only works with select Samsung phones. The Go, unlike the Rift or the Gear VR, doesn’t need to be tethered to another device.
“We think that Oculus Go is a fantastic entry point for people who may not have tried getting into VR yet,” said Madhu Muthukumar, the product manager for Oculus Go, in an interview with Cheddar’s Alex Heath.
“We think of VR as a spectrum,” said Muthukumar, with the Rift at one end and the Gear VR at the other. The Go fits “nicely in the middle," he said.
The Go includes its own for-sale VR video library and access to Oculus TV, a new platform that allows users to access TV apps such as ESPN, Netflix, and Hulu. The new Go headset is also compatible with personal photos and videos from a user's phone, social media accounts, and Dropbox. The Go can also be fitted with prescription lenses.
“This is how people imagine VR should work,” said Muthukumar.
Oculus has grown from the Kickstarter-funded brainchild of [Palmer Luckey](https://www.wired.com/2014/05/oculus-rift-4/), who created the first prototype in 2011, when he was 18 years old, to a major player in virtual reality. Facebook acquired the company in 2014 for $2 billion, prompting other tech companies such as Microsoft and Google to try to develop their own competitive VR products. Apple is [reportedly](https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-is-working-on-an-ar-augmented-reality-vr-virtual-reality-headset-powered-by-a-wireless-wigig-hub/)working on its own headset that can run both VR and AR technology.
Despite Silicon Valley's push into VR, the technology hasn't been widely adopted by consumers. In 2016, only 200,000 Rift headsets were sold globally, according to a study by [SuperData](https://www.economist.com/news/business/21724863-vr-has-been-more-about-hype-substance-will-change-reality-check-virtual). The VR software and hardware industry made $1.8 billion in 2016, half the amount estimated in the study.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/facebook-looks-to-take-vr-mainstream-with-oculus-go).
A.I.-based entertainment company, Deedub, recently raised
$20 million in a Series A round, led by Insight Partners. Deepdub uses A.I. technology to automate the dubbing process for foreign-language movies or TV shows, while using actors' original voices. The company says it can take just two to three minutes of data from an actor's voice and transform the voice into a different language. The funding comes as foreign-language films and shows like Netflix's 'Squid Game' have recently become more popular with audiences in the U.S. and around the world. Oz Krakowski, Chief Revenue Officer at Deepdub, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Energy Vault, the company developing sustainable, grid-scale energy storage solutions, is now trading on the New York Stock Exchange following the completion of its business combination with Novus Capital Corporation II. Energy Vault develops sustainable, grid-scale energy storage solutions designed to advance the transition to a carbon free, resilient power grid. Robert Piconi, co-founder and CEO of Energy Vault, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to disucss.
A new mobile app has launched just in time for Valentine's Day. Our.Love bills itself as an A.I.-powered, gamified, relationship wellness app for couples. The app is set in what the company calls the Coupleverse, a virtual world where each couple can build a virtual relationship home as they also build their real-world relationship. Founder and CEO Tal Zlotnitsky joined Cheddar to discuss how the app works. "The concept behind Our.Love is to give people the opportunity to understand where they stand in their relationship through very simple metrics that we provide within the app that will help them in real-time, see where they stand, see where their partner is, and be able to get closer together," he said.
Alyson Wilson, VP of Brand Innovation at Alo Yoga, joins Cheddar News to discuss the yoga apparel company entering the metaverse and teaming up with Spring Studios for New York Fashion Week.
Sēkr, a mobile app that aims to improve and digitize the outdoor travel experience, announced this week that it raised a $2.25 million seed round. In the Sēkr app, users can get access to more than 50,000 campsites throughout the U.S. including the nation's largest database of free campsites. The company is saying it is on a mission to make every step of the planning experience for outdoor travel easier, safer, and more social. Breanne Acio, co-founder and CEO of Sēkr, and Jess Shisler, co-founder and COO, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
