46
FORTUNE.COM // JULY 2019
enthusiasts believe can change everything.
Released in May, the Quest is Oculus’s first
all-in-one headset built for high-powered
gaming. It requires no wires or connec-
tion to a PC and can operate with a full
six degrees of freedom that allows users
to look around and walk in all directions,
unlike last year’s similarly wireless but
less immersive Oculus Go. At a starting
price of $399, it’s on par with mainstream
consoles like Sony’s PS4 and Microsoft’s
Xbox One.
Being placed into a VR device by an-
other person is an awkward experience.
Once the headset snugly fits over your
face, the person who was just assisting
you could be giving you the middle finger
for all you know because you are now star-
ing at, yes, another reality. In my case, it’s
a very satisfying one, in which my Oculus
Home, or the home screen, looks as if it
were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright,
complete with a maple wood interior
and a domed glass roof peering up at the
Northern Lights.
But the Quest is not about architecture;
it’s about games. More than 50 of themthe way for someone else’s breakthroughs. The Apple Newton
and the Polaroid Polavision died, after all, so that the iPad and
camcorder might live. It took a decade for smartphones to
become ubiquitous. Early VR headsets themselves date back to
the 1960s, while Nintendo and Sega in the 1990s forayed into
the consumer market with the ill-fated Virtual Boy and Sega VR
systems, respectively. And even if VR has been a disappointment
for the entertainment industry—the McCartney VR concert
video will never go platinum—the technology is proving useful
in sensible business applications, like workforce training, and
yet new entertainment concepts. After all, when a technology is
so exceedingly cool that it attracts a legion of true believers, it is
extremely difficult to kill.
INSIDE A BUILDING on Facebook’s sprawling Menlo
Park, Calif., campus, past a literal Facebook wall
scribbled with employees’ handwriting and moti-
vational quotes like “If you never try, you’ll never
know,” a spacious gray room is set up to demonstrate
the highly anticipated Oculus Quest. This is the device VR
ALTERNATE-REALITY CREATORS: Below: Facebook
director of VR product management Sean Liu
and executive producer Yelena Rachitsky aim to
execute Mark Zuckerberg’s VR strategy. At right:
Assembling an Oculus Quest optical eyecup module.