For about a month now, the Samsung Gear VR has been on display at a number of Best Buy locations across the United States, however it was only being demoed and was not available for sale. If you wanted to buy the device, you could only purchase it through the Samsung website. That all is about to change this week, when Best Buys across the country begin selling the mobile VR device.
The device, which still carries the “Innovation Edition” moniker is not yet a full consumer release, despite the retail debut. The actual consumer version of the product won’t be coming until likely this fall with the next Samsung phone release. John Carmack confirmed this at GDC during his keynote saying the company would be going “full consumer on Samsung’s next release cycle.”
This still is great news for the burgeoning VR industry. By bringing the device to 100 major retail locations across the US it assures that it will be seen by a large number of new people, which is incredibly important given how you really need to experience VR in order to understand it. With a relatively widespread distribution and the continued trend of “each Gear VR [having] been on 10 heads” that Carmack pointed to, we should really see VR continue to trend outward and into the mainstream. So, if for whatever reason you have yet to try VR, be sure to check out this list to find the closest Best Buy location to you demoing the device.
