When Oculus first launched the Alpha of its Social platform in October it gave us a peek into the future what it will be like to interact with people within Oculus’ platform. Today, Oculus announced a serious expansion of those features and a set of new games to go along with it.
If you have a Gear VR, tomorrow you will be able to create a profile on the Oculus Platform, which looks to have expanded into a full on social network allowing you to search for and send friend requests to others. Additionally, Oculus is releasing two new multiplayer experiences: Social Trivia and a multiplayer adventure title called Herobound: Gladiators, to showcase the functionality. According to Oculus’ blog post, both of those experiences should be available today, but at the time of this writing neither was in the store.
John Carmack, Oculus’ CTO, first teased the idea of Social Trivia to us on Twitter shortly after the Alpha’s launch saying it was coming “soon.” Four months later, the finished product will let you play with up to four friends to compete in a battle of wits. It’s like bar trivia, minus the beer.
Herobound: Gladiators, the second new title, pits goblins agains demons in a multiplayer arena co-op battle. We will report back more in depth on the title once we get our hands on, but it is joining Daydream Blue as one of first games on the Gear VR to have integrated voice chat – a big step forward from having to place phone calls while in VR to chat.
In addition to new games, users will soon be able to create their own rooms to watch Twitch and Vimeo streams with their friends – as opposed to the open rooms on the Alpha platform. There’s still no word on when you’ll be able to watch movies you’ve purchased from Oculus with friends. 
Later this month, Oculus plans to release “new tools for developers that make it even easier to create more incredible social VR games and apps.”
“VR is going to be the most social platform,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said recently.
The update also includes the ability to watch 360-degree videos from Facebook and, next week, you’ll be able to connect your Facebook account with Oculus Video. Eventually you’ll be able to use Facebook’s reactions to like and share videos from inside VR.
