The social media giant, Facebook, is reportedly taking major steps in a bid to reach its goal of getting a billion people to use Virtual Reality. In extension of this goal, Oculus, a prominent VR company that Facebook bought for USD 2 billion long back in 2014, has recently announced that it will debut its new VR headset in China in partnership with Xiaomi.
According to reports, this new Oculus VR headset is called as the “Mi VR Standalone” and is arguably similar to Oculus Go – a VR headset that Oculus has already unveiled in October 2017.
Quite strategically, Facebook’s partnership with Xiaomi will allow the social media giant to easily dip a toe in the China mixed reality industry, without having to do much with the censorship issues. Experts further reveal that this partnership will significantly take Facebook closer in achieving its goal, by enabling its VR technology to proliferate the world’s largest consumer market, China.
With the launch of this new VR headset in China, industry analysts anticipate the China mixed reality headsets market to witness soaring product demand than the global average.
For the record, the company executives present at the CES (Consumer Electronic Show) 2018 event in Las Vegas revealed that Xiaomi will be developing the new the Mi VR Standalone for the China mixed reality headsets market based on Oculus Go technology and powered by the Qualcomm processor. Sources further disclosed that the Mi VR Standalone will be power-driven by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 VR Platform, which was also used in Oculus Go.
No details were provided regarding the new headset’s availability or price in the CES event, however, according to earlier reports on Oculus Go, the social media giant revealed that it would hit the sustainable and smart technologies market early in 2018 and would come with a price tag of around USD 199.