Brendan Iribe, the CEO of Oculus between 2012 and 2016, says he did not suppose the 3DoF Oculus Go headset was a good suggestion.
Iribe joined Oculus as CEO close to the tip of its Kickstarter, and was declared a co-founder alongside Palmer Luckey, Nate Mitchell, and Michael Antonov. Iribe held the CEO title by the launch of the 2 Oculus Rift growth kits and the buyer Rift till simply after the Contact controllers shipped, when he stepped down to guide the Rift PC VR groups.
It has been extensively reported that on this period there have been fierce debates inside Oculus as to how a lot to give attention to PC VR versus standalone, and what the minimal functionality set for VR must be.
3DOF VR was the improper off-ramp. It was tremendous for Rift DK1, however the focus of Rift and Quest on 6DOF with Contact controllers was the fitting course.
— Brendan Iribe (@brendaniribe) Might 12, 2025
Iribe was changed as head of Oculus by Hugo Barra, a former Xiaomi VP. 9 months later the corporate introduced Oculus Go, a $200 standalone headset manufactured by Xiaomi, which was additionally bought in China as Xiaomi Mi VR.
Shipped in 2018, Oculus Go was Fb’s first standalone headset however lacked any form of cameras or different positional monitoring system. It was 3DoF, which means it might solely monitor the rotation of your head, not the place. If you happen to leaned, your entire world moved with you, as if it was hooked up to your head. Go’s easy laser-pointer distant was 3DoF too, which means it had a hard and fast place in house and will solely rotate, in a roundabout way work together with digital content material.
Regardless of the low worth and a star advertising and marketing marketing campaign, these crucial limitations meant Go failed to succeed in wherever close to the success that these inside Oculus who did consider in it had hoped. Whereas $200 was already decrease than some other fully-featured VR headset up to now, Go was even bought at $180 for Black Friday and Christmas, and lower to $150 inside two years available on the market.
Final yr, Iribe’s successor Hugo Barra himself admitted that Go “had extraordinarily low retention”, and that almost all patrons “fully deserted the headset after just a few weeks”. Barra left Fb in 2021 and known as Oculus Go “the largest product failure I’ve ever been related to”.
Clearly, Brendan Iribe was proper, as have been the others at Oculus who have been in opposition to Go.
Fb To Cease Promoting Oculus Go, Vows No Extra 3DOF Headsets
Fb will cease promoting Oculus Go this yr as the corporate sharpens its give attention to absolutely positionally tracked VR headsets like Oculus Quest. Oculus Go entered the market in 2018 as Fb’s first standalone VR headset. Priced at $199 and pitched as a media viewer, Go transitioned VR builders
After simply over two years available on the market, Fb stopped promoting Oculus Go and vowed to by no means ship one other 3DoF VR product once more, a promise which Meta has saved.
Brendan Iribe left Fb 5 months after the discharge of Oculus Go, and TechCrunch reported that this determination was associated to superiors cancelling the Oculus Rift 2 he wished to ship in favor of the cheaper Lenovo-designed Rift S. Whereas Iribe has praised Oculus Quest, it is clear his curiosity was in high-end PC VR, not the standalone strategy Meta has targeted on as an alternative.
