Thinking that Oculus’ insane Rift sale is to clear out stock for something new? Think again: the company has no plans for new Rift tech anytime soon.
Head of Content Jason Rubin said as much in a recent interview with Cnet, assuring people that just bought the headset — currently discounted to $399 with Oculus Touch — that they have years of content ahead of them. “I want to be clear: we are dropping the price to get more people in Rifts because we expect the next years to be very Rift-focused and Rift-centric,” Rubin said.
He noted that it would “take a while” for technologies such as eye-tracking and wireless support to become fully integrated features of a Rift headset. Wireless might be added via a peripheral in the future, similar to upgrade kits we’re currently seeing for the HTC Vive, but Oculus won’t be making it an out of the box feature for a long time.
“To answer your question about all these other technologies: People should not hold their breath and wait, it’s not coming in a minute,” Rubin added.
It sounds like we won’t be hearing about a true successor to the Rift anytime soon, then. That is unless the next iteration of the device is only incremental in its updates. For now, the company is focusing on content, having just released Lone Echo and announced one of its first big title for 2018 in Marvel Powers United VR.
If we are to see any hardware updates from Oculus soon, it will likely be in the standalone VR section. Last year at Oculus Connect the company showcased a prototype headset in this category, so we could possibly get a fresh look at this year’s event, especially with recent leaks suggests it’s work on not one but two standalone devices.
