24 PCWorld NOVEMBER 2020NEWS OCULUS TO KILL OFF PC-ONLY VR IN^2021
The Rift Platform will continue to grow while offering high-end PC VR experiences like Lone Echo II.Oculus said that it will phase out the
original Oculus Quest (go.pcworld.com/
ocq1), the standalone headset that Facebook
began selling in 2019. “Our goal with the
original Quest was to bring standalone VR to
as many people as possible,” Oculus said.
“We’re doubling down on that goal with
Quest 2.”
It’s unclear what Facebook and Oculus
plan with the “Rift platform,” though it
appears that the company sees the Oculus
Link Cable (go.pcworld.com/oclc) as the
bridge between PC-powered VR and the
standalone world. The company’s webpage
says the cable offers the opportunity to play
“the best of both worlds,” and that the cable
“unlocks the power of your PC to add
stunning graphics and heart-poundinggameplay to your VR experiences.”
In any event, we called the Oculus Rift S
“an incremental update” in our Oculus Rift S
review (go.pcworld.com/ocrs), noting that of
the Quest and the Rift S, the Quest was the
more interesting device. The Rift S also
shipped to PCWorld in a rather buggy state,
though a replacement solved those issues,
It’s unclear, though, what this
announcement will mean for developers who
had designed games that were optimized for
the Oculus Rift platform, powered by the PC.
Oculus announced several games that were
coming to the Quest 2 platform, including
multiplayer versions of Beat Saber; Population
One, a VR battle-royale game, and Jurassic
World: Aftermath, plus VR-specific versions of
Assassins’ Creed and Splinter Cell.